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