He
looked intensely at her, while rage, despair, and pity, convulsed his
heart; and as he beheld the confiding and conciliating smile with which
this gentle being met a look that might have withered the heart of the
boldest within him,--a Semele gazing in supplicating love on the
lightnings that were to blast her,--one human drop dimmed their
portentous lustre, as its softened rays fell on her. Turning fiercely
away, he flung his view on the ocean, as if to find, in the sight of
human life, some fuel for the fire that was consuming his vitals. The
ocean, that lay calm and bright before them as a sea of jasper, never
reflected two more different countenances, or sent more opposite
feelings to two hearts. Over Immalee’s, it breathed that deep and
delicious reverie, which those forms of nature that unite tranquillity
and profundity diffuse over souls whose innocence gives them a right to
an unmingled and exclusive enjoyment of nature. None but crimeless and
unimpassioned minds ever truly enjoyed earth, ocean, and heaven. At our
first transgression, nature expels us, as it did our first parents, from
her paradise for ever. “To the stranger the view was fraught with far different visions. He
viewed it as a tiger views a forest abounding with prey; there might be
the storm and the wreck; or, if the elements were obstinately calm,
there might be the gaudy and gilded pleasure barge, in which a Rajah and
the beautiful women of his haram were inhaling the sea breeze under
canopies of silk and gold, overturned by the unskilfulness of their
rowers, and their plunge, and struggle, and dying agony, amid the smile
and beauty of the calm ocean, produce one of those contrasts in which
his fierce spirit delighted. Or, were even this denied, he could watch
the vessels as they floated by, and, from the skiff to the huge trader,
be sure that every one bore its freight of woe and crime. There came on
the European vessels full of the passions and crimes of another
world,--of its sateless cupidity, remorseless cruelty, its intelligence,
all awake and ministrant in the cause of its evil passions, and its very
refinement operating as a stimulant to more inventive indulgence, and
more systematized vice. He saw them approach to traffic for “gold, and
silver, and the souls of men;”--to grasp, with breathless rapacity, the
gems and precious produce of those luxuriant climates, and deny the
inhabitants the rice that supported their inoffensive existence;--to
discharge the load of their crimes, their lust and their avarice, and
after ravaging the land, and plundering the natives, depart, leaving
behind them famine, despair, and execration; and bearing with them back
to Europe, blasted constitutions, inflamed passions, ulcerated hearts,
and consciences that could not endure the extinction of a light in their
sleeping apartment. “Such were the objects for which he watched; and one evening, when
solicited by Immalee’s incessant questions about the worlds to which the
vessels were hastening, or to which they were returning, he gave her a
description of the world, after his manner, in a spirit of mingled
derision, malignity, and impatient bitterness at the innocence of her
curiosity. There was a mixture of fiendish acrimony, biting irony, and
fearful truth, in his wild sketch, which was often interrupted by the
cries of astonishment, grief, and terror, from his hearer. “They come,”
said he, pointing to the European vessels, “from a world where the only
study of the inhabitants is how to increase their own sufferings, and
those of others, to the utmost possible degree; and, considering they
have only had 4000 years practice at the task, it must be allowed they
are tolerable proficients.”--“But is it possible?”--“You shall judge. In
aid, doubtless, of this desirable object, they have been all originally
gifted with imperfect constitutions and evil passions; and, not to be
ungrateful, they pass their lives in contriving how to augment the
infirmities of the one, and aggravate the acerbities of the other. They
are not like you, Immalee, a being who breathes amid roses, and subsists
only on the juices of fruits, and the lymph of the pure element. In
order to render their thinking powers more gross, and their spirits more
fiery, they devour animals, and torture from abused vegetables a drink,
that, without quenching thirst, has the power of extinguishing reason,
inflaming passion, and shortening life--the best result of all--for life
under such circumstances owes its only felicity to the shortness of its
duration.”

“Immalee shuddered at the mention of animal food, as the most delicate
European would at the mention of a cannibal feast; and while tears
trembled in her beautiful eyes, she turned them wistfully on her
peacocks with an expression that made the stranger smile. “Some,” said
he, by way of consolation, “have a taste by no means so
sophisticated,--they content themselves at their need with the flesh of
their fellow-creatures; and as human life is always miserable, and
animal life never so, (except from elementary causes), one would imagine
this the most humane and salutary way of at once gratifying the
appetite, and diminishing the mass of human suffering. But as these
people pique themselves on their ingenuity in aggravating the sufferings
of their situation, they leave thousands of human beings yearly to
perish by hunger and grief, and amuse themselves in feeding on animals,
whom, by depriving of existence, they deprive of the only pleasure their
condition has allotted them. When they have thus, by unnatural diet and
outrageous stimulation, happily succeeded in corrupting infirmity into
disease, and exasperating passion into madness, they proceed to exhibit
the proofs of their success, with an expertness and consistency truly
admirable. They do not, like you, Immalee, live in the lovely
independence of nature--lying on the earth, and sleeping with all the
eyes of heaven unveiled to watch you--treading the same grass till your
light step feels a friend in every blade it presses--and conversing with
flowers, till you feel yourself and them children of the united family
of nature, whose mutual language of love you have almost learned to
speak to each other--no, to effect their purpose, their food, which is
of itself poison, must be rendered more fatal by the air they inhale;
and therefore the more civilized crowd all together into a space which
their own respiration, and the exhalation of their bodies, renders
pestilential, and which gives a celerity inconceivable to the
circulation of disease and mortality. Four thousand of them will live
together in a space smaller than the last and lightest colonnade of your
young banyan-tree, in order, doubtless, to increase the effects of fœtid
air, artificial heat, unnatural habits, and impracticable exercise. The
result of these judicious precautions is just what may be guessed.