Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 051.djvu/828

812  was heard from the couch on which she lay,—Rodolfo ran towards her, and clasped her in his arms. "Great God! thou art living!" he cried, "how hast thou been saved?"

"By me"—said Thisbia, endeavouring to raise herself—"By me!—for thee!"

In vain did Rodolfo run to the expiring girl;—all succour was useless— all his passionate regret unavailing.— "Go," she said, "to thy Catarina;— give yourself up to joy forget that I am here. I have deceived the podesta. I gave a narcotic instead of a poison. Horses are ready. In three hours you will be out of the power of Venice. She is free dead to the  podesta dead in the estimation of all the world living only for you. Have I not done well, Rodolfo ?"

He hung like one distracted over the generous and expiring Thisbia "Ah!" said she with a faint smile, which recalled, for the last time, the exquisite grace and gaiety of one of the most fascinating of women "you will think of me sometimes, will you not? After all, you will say she was a good girl that Thisbia. Let me say once more, my Rodolfo adieu, my Rodolfo"—and, still holding the hand of Rodolfo, she breathed her last.

 

all philosophers, ancient or modern, we are acquainted with none who presents fewer vulnerable points than Bishop Berkeley. His language, it is true, has sometimes the appearance of paradox; but there is nothing paradoxical in his thoughts, and time has proved the adamantine solidity of his principles. With less sophistry than the simplest, and with more subtlety than the acutest of his contemporaries, the very perfection of his powers prevented him from being appreciated by the age in which he lived. The philosophy of that period was just sufficiently tinctured with common sense to pass current with the vulgar, while the common sense of the period was just sufficiently coloured by philosophy to find acceptance among the learned. But Berkeley, ingenious beyond the ingenuities of philosophy, and unsophisticated beyond the artlessness of common sense, saw that there was no sincerity in the terms of this partial and unstable compromise; that the popular opinions, which gave currency and credence to the theories of the day, were not the unadulterated convictions of the natural understanding; and that the theories of the day, which professed to give enlightenment to the popular opinions, were not the genuine offspring of the speculative reason. In endeavouring to construct a system in which this spurious coalition should be exposed, and in which our natural convictions and our speculative conclusions should be more firmly and enduringly reconciled, he necessarily offended both parties, even when he appeared to be giving way to the opposite prejudices of each. He overstepped the predilections both of the learned and the unlearned. His extreme subtlety was a stumbling-block in the path of the philosophers; and his extreme simplicity was more than the advocates of common sense were inclined to bargain for.

But the history of philosophy repairs any injustice which may be done to philosophy itself: and the doctrines of Berkeley, incomplete as they appear when viewed as the isolated tenets of an individual, and short as they no doubt fell, in his hands, of their proper and ultimate expression, acquire a fuller and a profounder significance when studied in connexion with the speculations which have since followed in their train. The great problems of humanity have no room to work themselves out within the limits of an individual mind. Time alone weaves a canvas wide enough to do justice to their true proportions; and a few broad strokes is all that the 