STUDY X. 315 



fical efFeâ: produces, in Man, a moral feeling. For 

 example, I have feen many pidures, and read 

 many defcriptions, of battles, which attempted to 

 infpire horror, by reprefenting an infinite variety 

 of inftruments of deftrudtion, and a multitude of 

 dying and dead perfons, wounded in every poffible 

 manner. The lefs did I feel myfelf moved, the 

 more I perceived the machinery employed to move 

 me : one effefb deftroyed the other. But I have 

 been greatly affedled by reading, in Plut arch y the 

 death of Cleopatra, 



That great Painter of calamity, reprefents the 

 Queen of Egypt meditating, in the tomb of An- 

 thony, on the means of eluding the triumph of 

 Augujlm. A peafant brings her, with permiffion 

 of the guards on duty at the entrance of the 

 tomb, a balket of figs. The moment that the 

 clown has retired, (he haftens to uncover the baf- 

 ket, and perceives the afpic, which, by her con- 

 trivance, had been introduced among the figs, to 

 put a period to her miferable life. This contraft, 

 a woman being the fubjedl, of liberty and llavery, 

 of royal power and annihilation, of voluptuoufnefs 

 and death ; thofe leaves and fruits amidft which 

 llie perceives only the head and fparkling eyes of 

 a puny reptile, prepared to terminate interefls of 

 fuch *^ great pith and moment;" and which flie 



thus 



