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DUTY AND INCLINATION.
309

weeds, and stagnates by its distant meanderings from its pure and pellucid source,—so the active imagination, the capacious intellect of Douglas, those high and valuable endowments, had, by an undue use of them, been perverted. But drawn from his former dissipated life to the cultivation of his talents,—directed to their true and only means of usefulness, the general good of society,—from the false and insinuating pleasures of sense, he became acted upon by motives, and guided by principles, of a quite opposite tendency. Most happy was the change, and most delightful to contemplate!

We have seen him gradually rising from the penitent sufferer into the man gifted with those high, those transcendent qualities, so ennobling to human nature!—scrupulous in the discharge of every moral obligation; conscientiously just in all his actions; and with a zeal the most persevering and devout, shunning every species of evil. A reformation so complete, who could behold without offering their homage of admiration! No wonder, then, that the warm, the tender, affectionate heart of Rosilia, overflowing with sensibility, was melted with a joy unspeakable!

At her own particular request, the wedding ceremony was postponed, in order that it might take place at the Bower, and under the auspices of Dr. Lovesworth; the private retirement of that spot favouring, in her idea, the sacredness of the ceremony, and thence better suited to act in accordance