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has finished the perusal of the document, she endeavours at first to stand on the defensive,-- "She stood at bay, _depending on that crutch made like a stilt_, The impudent vulgarity wherewith women outstare guilt." But she finally succumbs under the influence of the following refined vituperation:-- "Don't speak! You would not have me unacquainted with what led To this result? No! listen, and let _me_ relate what bred Thy tears and cheapen'd chasteness--(_we may talk now as if wed._) "This book here, that lay open when I came in unaware, Is not the first--I thought so!--but the last of many a stair Of easy fall. Such only could have led you to _his lair_. "These drugs, at first, had scarcely strength to move your virgin blood; They slowly rose in action, till they wrought it to a flood, Fit for their giver's purpose, who--_who turn'd it into mud!_" The lover then leaves Lilian to her own meditations, and commences to rant and rave against her seducer in good set terms, of which the following is a specimen:-- "Pardon, Heaven! that I doubted whether there was any hell. Oh! but now I do believe it! Firmly, firmly! I foretell Of one that shall rank high there: he's a scoffer, and must dwell "Where worms are--ever gnawing scoffers' hearts into belief; Where weepings, gnashings, wailings, thirstings, groanings, ghastly grief, For ever and for ever pay the price of pleasures brief; "Where Gallios, who while living knew but cared for none of these, Now amazed with shame, would gladly, might it God (_Fate there_) appease, Watch and pray a million cycles for a single moment's ease." After having thus breathed his passion, in a diatribe which beats in abomination any slang that was ever ranted out of a tub by a mountebank saint, he harps back upon the prodigious attractiveness of his mistress, in the following pathetic, though not very consistent terms-- "Ah but had you known my Lilian! (a sweet name?) Indeed, indeed, I doted on my Lilian. None can praise her half her meed. Perfect in soul; too gentle--others' need she made her need; "_Quite passionless_, but ever bounteous-minded even to waste; Much tenderness in talking; very urgent, yet no haste; _And chastity--to laud it would have seem'd almost unchaste._ "Graced highly, too, with knowledge; versed in tongues; a quee
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