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The griefs and dishonour of our noble parents, who have been eminent for virtue and piety, oh suffer them not to be regarded in this censuring world as the most unhappy of all the race of old nobility; thou art the darling child, the joy of all, the last hope left, the refuge of their sorrow, for they, alas, have had but unkind stars to influence their unadvised off-spring; no want of virtue in their education, but this last blow of fate must strike them dead; think, think of this, my child, and yet retire from ruin; haste, fly from destruction which pursues thee fast; haste, haste and save thy parents and a sister, or what is more dear, thy fame; mine has already received but too many desperate wounds, and all through my unkind lord's growing passion for thee, which was most fatally founded on my ruin, and nothing but my ruin could advance it; and when, my sister, thou hast run thy race, made thyself loathed, undone and infamous as hell, despis'd, scorn'd and abandon'd by all, lampoon'd, perhaps diseas'd; this faithless man, this cause of all will leave thee too, grow weary of thee, nauseated by use; he may perhaps consider what sins, what evils, and what inconveniencies and shames thou'st brought him to, and will not be the last shall loathe and hate thee: for though youth fancy it have a mighty race to run of pleasing vice and vanity, the course will end, the goal will be arrived to at the last, where they will sighing stand, look back, and view the length of precious time they've fool'd away; when traversed over with honour and discretion, how glorious were the journey, and with what joy the wearied traveller lies down and basks beneath the shades that end the happy course.

Better even than Walt Whitman, Moussorgsky might have said: "Through me, voices long dumb, many long dumb voices, Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves, Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs, Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion"

'Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseas'd; Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow; Raze out the written troubles of the brain; And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff, Which weighs upon the heart? To which Dr. Brocklesby readily answered, from the same great poet: therein the patient Must minister to himself .

'Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseas'd; Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow; Raze out the written troubles of the brain; And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff, Which weighs upon the heart? To which Dr. Brocklesby readily answered, from the same great poet: therein the patient Must minister to himself.