Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/161

( 136 ) and a grumbling, coarse, and phlegmatic Dutchman, was too obvious not to strike the Batavian fair ones, and their partiality was so openly expressed, that our countrymen could not well avoid taking advantage of it, and in pure compassion, preventing them from "wasting their sweetness on the desert air." But, in this respect, public opinion seems to be at present the only criterion of right and wrong, and as that opinion is entirely governed by the conduct of the majority, such venial trespasses are considered with mutual charity, and the damsel who takes an annual trip to the country for the benefit of mountain air, returns in about two months, and receives the congratulations of her friends upon the restored bloom of her complexion, with the modest air