University of Virginia Library

SCENE IV.

Sopheian's Palace.
Sopheian and Caled meet.
Soph.
Friend, are our gates secured, our guards disposed—
All measures ta'en against surprize or treachery,
Where such an inmate nestles?

Cal.
All is done,
What diligence could act, or prudence dictate.—
The danger is not ours.

Soph.
How's that, my friend?

Cal.
The common croud, who ever loved your person,
Wean'd of their superstitious awe of Mahomet
By your last conference, have caught a rumour
Touching your long lost children, and the danger
That threatens at their life—All fired, they run
To corners, and in sudden whispers plot
The fall of the Impostor and his followers.

Soph.
Ah Caled! wherefore do I know this business?
Which known, I must prevent.

Cal.
'Tis therefore told,
To be prevented—

Soph.
Does Christianity
Enjoin such heights, stupendous to our natures?

Cal.
It does—whate'er of worth, truth, candour, honour,
Can be selected and sublimed from things,
Through the whole man it raises and expands—
No out-let for evasion, no compounding!
Your faith is pass'd; and, to your stretch of power,
You are now the guardian of your foe.

Soph.
Yet, yet,
I could have wish'd—

Cal.
To what effect, Sopheian?
The Almighty Faith of which thou art now professor,
In the suspended arm of feeble man
Arrests all power; and to itself assumes
The scope of all events, even to a hair,
Which on the unbonneted or hoary head
Gives comfort against cold.

Soph.
And is it so?

Cal.
All known, all noted, balanced, and adjusted,
As in a chymist's scale!—Man may intend—
That is his freedom, that his power—no more!—
Nor, from creation, hath the bustling world
E'er sway'd Eternal Wisdom from his line,
An atom's deviation.

Soph.
If the end,
Must be, as it must be; what boots it, then,
To swerve from excellence?

Cal.
Only to earn
The guilt, but not the issue of our purpose.
For will or nill, the same effect subscribes
The over-ruling dictate. Fear not, then,
What the spectator man may strive to warp
Amid the works of Heaven—Go thou straight on;
And do, as honour bids.

Soph.
'Tis right, 'tis great,
'Tis glorious!—and my wish, so prompt of late,
Shrinks back ashamed, nor dares abide the beam
Of such illumination. Haste, my Caled,
Our word hath past: our children let us leave
To Heaven—let's haste, my friend, let's fly to save,
To rescue their destroyer.

Cal.
I go, my lord.

Soph.
Soft, Caled—first a word—