Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/257

Rh themselves, in their dress, their language, and even in their pleasures. The youth whose beard began to form itself, feeling as it were an attachment to his puerile dependency, viewed with tenderness and complacency a cast whose milk was his first aliment. The husband, dissatisfied with the cold retribution of a divided bed, sought a compensation in the female slave. The horror of his loathsome crime was confounded in the obscurity of his accomplice. The mixture of the specieses became common, and thence originated the various sub-divisions which are more or less valued in proportion to the degrees of proximity or distance from their original colour. These spurious fruits of an abominable union ceased already to be useful in the domestic occupations, or performed them with an air of superiority. The fashions, personal merit, and the education of the youth, were swayed and directed by these vile souls. Their influence, and the common depravation, were carried to such a length, that the Roman women, even these Roman women, gloried in having some resemblance, either in the mind or person, with their female slaves. The avenues of pleasure and of love ........."

Here the parchment was so much worm-eaten, that it was impossible for us to ascertain to what length these declamations may have been carried. In one respect we congratulated ourselves on this circumstance; for if the author of the manuscript had been enabled, through us, to explain himself still further, his translators might have been exposed to the risk, that this noble public, and the persons engaged in its service, might regard this fragment as a metaphorical satire, which certainly never entered into their thought.

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