monstrances. But notwithstanding the joint endeavours of all his
friends, a deep fixed melancholy remained after every consequence of his
disease had vanished. In vain they essayed to elude his grief by gaiety
and diversions, in vain they tried to decoy his heart into some new
engagement.

These kind attempts served only to feed and nourish that melancholy which
pined within his bosom. Monimia still haunted him in the midst of these
amusements, while his reflection whispered to him, "Pleasures like these
I might have relished with her participation." That darling idea mingled
in all the female assemblies at which he was present, eclipsing their
attractions, and enhancing the bitterness of his loss; for absence,
enthusiasm, and even his despair had heightened the charms of the fair
orphan into something supernatural and divine.

Time, that commonly weakens the traces of remembrance, seemed to deepen
its impressions in his breast; nightly, in his dreams, did he converse
with his dear Monimia, sometimes on the verdant bank of a delightful
stream, where he breathed, in soft murmurs, the dictates of his love and
admiration; sometimes reclined within the tufted grove, his arm encircled
and sustained her snowy neck, whilst she, with looks of love ineffable,
gazed on his face, invoking Heaven to bless her husband and her lord.
Yet, even in these illusions was his fancy oft alarmed for the ill-fated
fair. Sometimes he viewed her tottering on the brink of a steep
precipice, far distant from his helping hand; at other times she seemed
to sail along the boisterous tide, imploring his assistance, then would
he start with horror from his sleep, and feel his sorrows more than
realised; he deserted his couch, he avoided the society of mankind, he
courted sequestered shades where he could indulge his melancholy; there
his mind brooded over his calamity until his imagination became familiar
with all the ravages of death; it contemplated the gradual decline of
Monimia's health, her tears, her distress, her despair at his imagined
cruelty; he saw, through that perspective, every blossom of her beauty
wither, every sparkle vanish from her eyes; he beheld her faded lips, her
pale cheek, and her inanimated features, the symmetry of which not death
itself was able to destroy. His fancy conveyed her breathless corse to
the cold grave, o'er which, perhaps, no tear humane was shed, where her
delicate limbs were consigned to dust, where she