"How perish'd is the joy that's past,
The present how unsteady!
What comfort can be great and last,
When this is gone already;"

And close by it is another, written, perhaps, by some adventurous
lover, who had stolen into the lady's chamber during her absence:

"THEODOSIUS TO CAMILLA.

I'd rather in your favour live,
Than in a lasting name;
And much a greater rate would give
For happiness than fame.

THEODOSIUS. 1700."

When I look at these faint records of gallantry and tenderness; when I
contemplate the fading portraits of these beautiful girls, and think,
too, that they have long since bloomed, reigned, grown old, died, and
passed away, and with them all their graces, their triumphs, their
rivalries, their admirers; the whole empire of love and pleasure in
which they ruled--"all dead, all buried, all forgotten," I find a
cloud of melancholy stealing over the present gayeties around me. I
was gazing, in a musing mood, this very morning, at the portrait of
the lady whose husband was killed abroad, when the fair Julia entered
the gallery, leaning on the arm of the captain. The sun shone through
the row of windows on her as she passed along, and she seemed to beam
out each time into brightness, and relapse into shade, until the door