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even of Don Juan, so offensively degrading as Tom Jones' affair with Lady Bellaston. It is no doubt a wretched apology for the indecencies of a man of genius, that equal indecencies have been forgiven to his predecessors: But the precedent of lenity might have been followed; and we might have passed both the levity and the voluptuousness-the dangerous warmth of his romantic situations, and the scandal of his cold-blooded dissipation. It might not have been so easy to get over his dogmatic scepticism-his hard-heartand eager expositions of the non-existence of virtue and honour. Even this, however, might have been comparatively harmless, if it had not been accompanied by that which may look, at first sight, as a palliation-the frequent presentment of the most touching pictures of tenderness, generosity, and faith.

sure they will pass with no other person.They are so manifestly inconsistent, as mutually to destroy each other-and so weak, as to be quite insufficient to account for the fact, even if they could be effectually combined for that purpose. The party that Lord Byron has chiefly offended, bears no malice to Lords and Gentlemen. Against its rancour, on the contrary, these qualities have undoubtedly been his best protection; and had it not been for them, he may be assured that he would, long ere now, have been shown up in the pages of the Quarterly, with the same candoured maxims of misanthropy-his cold-blooded. and liberality that has there been exercised towards his friend Lady Morgan. That the base and the bigoted-those whom he has darkened by his glory, spited by his talent, or mortified by his neglect-have taken advantage of the prevailing disaffection, to vent their puny malice in silly nicknames and vulgar scurrility, is natural and true. But Lord The charge we bring against Lord Byron, Byron may depend upon it, that the dissatis- in short, is, that his writings have a tendency faction is not confined to them--and, indeed, to destroy all belief in the reality of virtue that they would never have had the courage and to make all enthusiasm and conto assail one so immeasurably their superior, if he had not at once made himself vulnerable by his errors, and alienated his natural defenders by his obstinate adherence to them. We are not bigots or rival poets. We have not been detractors from Lord Byron's fame, nor the friends of his detractors; and we tell him-far more in sorrow than in anger-that we verily believe the great body of the English nation-the religious, the moral, and the candid part of it-consider the tendency of his writings to be immoral and perniciousand look upon his perseverance in that strain of composition with regret and reprehension. He has no priestlike cant or priestlike reviling to apprehend from us. We do not charge him with being either a disciple or an apostle of Satan; nor do we describe his poetry as a mere compound of blasphemy and obscenity. On the contrary, we are inclined to believe that he wishes well to the happiness of mankind-and are glad to testify, that his poems abound with sentiments of great dignity and tenderness, as well as passages of infinite sublimity and beauty. But their general tendency we believe to be in the highest degree pernicious; and we even think that it is chiefly by means of the fine and lofty sentiments they contain, that they acquire their most fatal power of corruption. This may sound at first, perhaps, like a paradox; but we are mistaken if we shall not make it intelligible enough in the end.

We think there are indecencies and indelicacies, seductive descriptions and profligate representations, which are extremely reprehensible; and also audacious speculations, and erroneous and uncharitable assertions, equally indefensible. But if these had stood alone, and if the whole body of his works had been made up of gaudy ribaldry and flashy scepticism, the mischief, we think, would have been much less than it is. He is not more obscene, perhaps, than Dryden or Prior, and other classical and pardoned writers; nor is there any passage in the history

stancy of affection ridiculous; and this, not so much by direct maxims and examples, of an imposing or seducing kind, as by the constant exhibition of the most profligate heartlessness in the persons who had been transiently represented as actuated by the purest and most exalted emotions-and in the lessons of that very teacher who had been, but a moment before, so beautifully pathetic in the expression of the loftiest conceptions. When a gay voluptuary descants, somewhat too freely, on the intoxications of love and wine, we ascribe his excesses to the effervescence of youthful spirits, and do not consider him as seriously impeaching either the value or the reality of the severer virtues; and in the same way, when the satirist deals out his sarcasms against the sincerity of human professions, and unmasks the secret infirmities of our bosoms, we consider this as aimed at hypocrisy, and not at mankind: or, at all events, and in either case, we consider the Sensualist and the Misanthrope as wandering, each in his own delusion-and are contented to pity those who have never known the charms of a tender or generous affection.The true antidote to such seductive or revolting views of human nature, is to turn to the scenes of its nobleness and attraction; and to reconcile ourselves again to our kind, by listening to the accents of pure affection and incorruptible honour. But if those accents have flowed in all their sweetness, from the very lips that instantly open again to mock and blaspheme them, the antidote is mingled with the poison, and the draught is the more deadly for the mixture!

The leveller may pursue his orgies, and the wanton display her enchantments, with comparative safety to those around them, as long as they know or believe that there are purer and higher enjoyments, and teachers and followers of a happier way. But if the Priest pass from the altar, with persuasive exhortations to peace and purity still trembling on his tongue, to join familiarly in the grossest and most pro

fane debauchery-if the Matron, who has charmed all hearts by the lovely sanctimonies of her conjugal and maternal endearments, glides out from the circle of her children, and gives bold and shameless way to the most abandoned and degrading vicesour notions of right and wrong are at once confounded our confidence in virtue shaken to the foundation-and our reliance on truth and fidelity at an end for ever.

This is the charge which we bring against Lord Byron. We say that, under some strange misapprehension as to the truth, and the duty of proclaiming it, he has exerted all the powers of his powerful mind to convince his readers, both directly and indirectly, that all ennobling pursuits, and disinterested virtues, are mere deceits or illusions-hollow and despicable mockeries for the most part, and, at best, but laborious follies. Religion, love, patriotism, valour, devotion, constancy, ambition-all are to be laughed at, disbelieved in, and despised!—and nothing is really good, so far as we can gather, but a succession of dangers to stir the blood, and of banquets and intrigues to soothe it again! If this doctrine stood alone, with its examples, it would revolt, we believe more than it would seduce:-But the author of it has the unlucky gift of personating all those sweet and lofty illusions, and that with such grace and force, and truth to nature, that it is impossible not to suppose, for the time, that he is among the most devoted of their votaries till he casts off the character with a jerk-and, the moment after he has moved and exalted us to the very height of our conception, resumes his mockery at all things serious or sublime and lets us down at once on some coarse joke, hard-hearted sarcasm, or fierce and relentless personality as if on purpose to show

"Whoe'er was edified, himself was not or to demonstrate practically as it were, and by example, how possible it is to have all fine and noble feelings, or their appearance, for a moment, and yet retain no particle of respect for them-or of belief in their intrinsic worth or permanent reality. Thus, we have an indelicate but very clever scene of young Juan's concealment in the bed of an amorous matron, and of the torrent of "rattling and audacious eloquence" with which she repels the too just suspicions of her jealous lord. All this is merely comic, and a little coarse-But then the poet chooses to make this shameless and abandoned woman address to her young gallant an epistle breathing the very spirit of warm, devoted, pure, and unalterable love thus profaning the holiest language of the heart, and indirectly associating it with the most hateful and degrading sensuality. In like manner, the sublime and terrific description of the Shipwreck is strangely and disgustingly broken by traits of low humour and buffoonery; and we pass immediately from the moans of an agonising father fainting over his famished son, to facetious stories of Juan's begging a paw of his father's dog--and refusing a slice of his tutor!-as if it were a fine thing to be hard-hearted-and pity and

42

compassion were fit only to be laughed at. In the same spirit, the glorious Ode on the aspirations of Greece after Liberty, is instantly followed up by a strain of dull and coldblooded ribaldry-and we are hurried on from the distraction and death of Haidee to merry scenes of intrigue and masquerading in the seraglio. Thus all good feelings are excited only to accustom us to their speedy and complete extinction; and we are brought back, from their transient and theatrical exhibition, to the staple and substantial doctrine of the work-the non-existence of constancy in women or honour in men, and the folly of expecting to meet with any such virtues, or of cultivating them, for an undeserving world; and all this mixed up with so much wit and cleverness, and knowledge of human nature, as to make it irresistibly pleasant and plausible-while there is not only no antidote supplied, but every thing that might have operated in that way has been anticipated, and presented already in as strong and engaging a form as possible-but under such associations as to rob it of all efficacy, or even turn it into an auxiliary of the poison.

This is our sincere opinion of much of Lord Byron's most splendid poetry-a little exaggerated perhaps in the expression, from a desire to make our exposition clear and impressive

but, in substance, we think merited and correct. We have already said, and we deliberately repeat, that we have no notion that Lord Byron had any mischievous intention in these publications and readily acquit him of any wish to corrupt the morals or impair the happiness of his readers. Such a wish, indeed, is in itself altogether inconceivable; but it is our duty, nevertheless, to say, that much of what he has published appears to us to have this tendency and that we are acquainted with no writings so well calculated to extinguish in young minds all generous enthusiasm and gentle affection-all respect for themselves, and all love for their kind-to make them practise and profess hardily what it teaches them to suspect in others-and actually to persuade them that it is wise and manly and knowing to laugh, not only at selfdenial and restraint, but at all aspiring ambition, and all warm and constant affection.

How opposite to this is the system, or the temper, of the great author of Waverley-the only living individual to whom Lord Byron must submit to be ranked as inferior in genius

and still more deplorably inferior in all that makes genius either amiable in itself, or useful to society! With all his unrivalled power of invention and judgment, of pathos and pleasantry, the tenor of his sentiments is uniformly generous, indulgent, and goodhumoured; and so remote from the bitterness of misanthropy, that he never indulges in sarcasm, and scarcely, in any case, carries his merriment so far as derision. But the peculiarity by which he stands most broadly and proudly distinguished from Lord Byron is, that, beginning as he frequently does, with some ludicrous or satirical theme, he never fails to raise out of it some feelings of a gener

2 c2

ous or gentle kind, and to end by exciting our tender pity, or deep respect, for those very individuals or classes of persons who seemed at first to be brought on the stage for our mere sport and amusement-thus making the ludicrous itself subservient to the cause of benevolence and inculcating, at every turn, and as the true end and result of all his trials and experiments, the love of our kind, and the duty and delight of a cordial and genuine sympathy with the joys and sorrows of every condition of men. It seems to be Lord Byron's way, on the contrary, never to excite a kind or a noble sentiment, without making haste to obliterate it by a torrent of unfeeling mockery or relentless abuse, and taking pains to show how well those passing fantasies may be reconciled to a system of resolute misanthropy,

or so managed as even to enhance its merits, or confirm its truth. With what different sensations, accordingly, do we read the works of those two great writers!-With the one, we seem to share a gay and gorgeous banquetwith the other, a wild and dangerous intoxication. Let Lord Byron bethink him of this contrast-and its causes and effects. Though he scorns the precepts, and defies the censure of ordinary men, he may yet be moved by the example of his only superior!-In the mean time, we have endeavoured to point out the canker that stains the splendid flowers of his poetry-or, rather, the serpent that lurks beneath them. If it will not listen to the voice of the charmer, that brilliant garden, gay and glorious as it is, must be deserted, and its existence deplored, as a snare to the unwary.

(August, 1817.)

Manfred; a Dramatic Poem. By Lord BYRON. 8vo. pp. 75. London: 1811.

ings, but he treats them with gentleness and pity; and, except when stung to impatience by too importunate an intrusion, is kind and considerate of the comforts of all around him. This piece is properly entitled a Dramatic Poem-for it is merely poetical, and is not at

THIS is a very strange-not a very pleasing -but unquestionably a very powerful and most poetical production. The noble author, we find, still deals with that dark and overawing Spirit, by whose aid he has so often subdued the minds of his readers, and in whose might he has wrought so many won-all a drama or play in the modern acceptation ders. In Manfred, we recognise at once the gloom and potency of that soul which burned and blasted and fed upon itself in Harold, and Conrad, and Lara-and which comes again in this piece, more in sorrow than in angermore proud, perhaps, and more awful than ever-but with the fiercer traits of its misanthropy subdued, as it were, and quenched in the gloom of a deeper despondency. Manfred does not, like Conrad and Lara, wreak the anguish of his burning heart in the dangers and daring of desperate and predatory war-nor seek to drown bitter thoughts in the tumult of perpetual contention-nor yet, like Harold, does he sweep over the peopled scenes of the earth with high disdain and aversion, and make his survey of the business and pleasures and studies of man an occasion for taunts and sarcasms, and the food of an immeasurable spleen. He is fixed by the genius of the poet in the majestic solitudes of the central Alps-where, from his youth up, he has lived in proud but calm seclusion from the ways of men; conversing only with the magnificent forms and aspects of nature by which he is surrounded, and with the Spirits of the Elements over whom he has acquired dominion, by the secret and unhallowed studies of Sorcery and Magic. He is averse indeed from mankind, and scorns the low and frivolous nature to which he belongs; but he cherishes no animosity or hostility to that feeble race. Their concerns excite no interest-their pursuits no sympathy-their joys no envy. It is irksome and vexatious for him to be crossed by them in his melancholy mus

of the term. It has no action; no plot-and no characters; Manfred merely muses and suffers from the beginning to the end. His distresses are the same at the opening of the scene and at its closing-and the temper in which they are borne is the same. A hunter and a priest, and some domestics, are indeed introducea; but they have no connection with the passions or sufferings on which the interest depends; and Manfred is substantially alone throughout the whole piece. He holds no communion but with the memory of the Being he had loved; and the immortal Spirits whom he evokes to reproach with his misery, and their inability to relieve it. These unearthly beings approach nearer to the character of persons of the drama-but still they are but choral accompaniments to the performance; and Manfred is, in reality, the only actor and sufferer on the scene. To delineate his character indeed-to render conceivable his feelings-is plainly the whole scope and design of the poem; and the conception and execution are, in this respect, equally admirable. It is a grand and terrific vision of a being invested with superhuman attributes, in order that he may be capable of more than human sufferings, and be sustained under them by more than human force and pride. To object to the improbability of the fiction is, we think, to mistake the end and aim of the author. Probabilities, we apprehend, did not enter at all into his consideration-his object was, to produce effect-to exalt and dilate the character through whom he was to interest or appal us-and to raise our concep

Nor flattering throb, that beats with hopes or
wishes,

Or lurking love of something on the earth.-
Now to my task."-pp. 7, 8.

When his evocation is completed, a star is

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tion of it, by all the helps that could be derived from the majesty of nature, or the dread of superstition. It is enough, therefore, if the situation in which he has placed him is conceivable-and if the supposition of its reality enhances our emotions and kindles our im-seen at the far end of a gallery, and celestial agination;-for it is Manfred only that we are voices are heard reciting a great deal of poetry. required to fear, to pity, or admire. If we After they have answered that the gift of can once conceive of him as a real existence, oblivion is not at their disposal, and intimated and enter into the depth and the height of his that death itself could not bestow it on him, pride and his sorrows, we may deal as we they ask if he has any further demand to please with the means that have been used to make of them. He answers, furnish us with this impression, or to enable "No, none: yet stay!-one moment, ere we us to attain to this conception. We may re- I would behold ye face to face. I hear gard them but as types, or metaphors, or alle-Your voices, sweet and melancholy sounds gories: But he is the thing to be expressed; As music on the waters; and I see and the feeling and the intellect, of which all The steady aspect of a clear large star; these are but shadows. But nothing more. Approach me as ye are, Or one, or all, in your accustom'd forms. Spirit. We have no forms beyond the elements Of which we are the mind and principle: But choose a form-in that we will appear. Man. I have no choice; there is no form on earth Who is most powerful of ye, take such aspect Hideous or beautiful to me. Let him As unto him may seem most fitting.-Come! Seventh Spirit. (Appearing in the shape of a beautiful female figure.) Behold! M. Oh God! if it be thus, and thou Art not a madness and a mockery, Ivet might be most happy.-I will clasp thee, And we again will be- [The figure vanishes. My heart is crush'd!

The events, such as they are, upon which the piece may be said to turn, have all taken place long before its opening, and are but dimly shadowed out in the casual communications of the agonising being to whom they relate. Nobly born and trained in the castle of his ancestors, he had very soon sequestered himself from the society of men; and, after running through the common circle of human sciences, had dedicated himself to the worship of the wild magnificence of nature, and to those forbidden studies by which he had learned to command its presiding powers.One companion, however, he had, in all his tasks and enjoyments-a female of kindred genius, taste, and capacity-lovely too beyond all loveliness; but, as we gather, too nearly related to be lawfully beloved. The catastrophe of their unhappy passion is insinuated in the darkest and most ambiguous terms-on the top of the Jungfrau mountain, mediall that we make out is, that she died un-solitude as usual the voice of his habitual tating self-destruction-and uttering forth in timely and by violence, on account of this fatal attachment-though not by the act of its object. He killed her, he says, not with his hand-but his heart; and her blood was shed, though not by him! From that hour, life is a burden to him, and memory a torture -and the extent of his power and knowledge serves only to show him the hopelessness and endlessness of his misery.

The piece opens with his evocation of the Spirits of the Elements, from whom he demands the boon of forgetfulness-and questions them as to his own immortality. The scene is in his Gothic tower at midnight-and opens with a soliloquy that reveals at once the state of the speaker, and the genius of

the author.

"The lamp must be replenish'd-but even then
It will not burn so long as I must watch!
Philosophy and science, and the springs
Of wonder, and the wisdom of the world,
I have essayed, and in my mind there is
A power to make these subject to itself-
But they avail not: I have done men good,
And I have met with good even among men-
But this avail'd not: I have had my foes,
And none have baffled, many fallen before me-
But this avail'd not :-Good, or evil, life,
Powers, passions, all I see in other beings,
Have been to me as rain unto the sands,
Since that all-nameless hour! I have no dread,
And feel the curse to have no natural fear,

[MANFRED falls senseless."-pp. 15, 16. formance ends with a long poetical incantaThe first scene of this extraordinary pertion, sung by the invisible spirits over the senseless victim before them. The second shows him in the bright sunshine of morning,

love and admiration for the grand and beautidespair, and those intermingled feelings of ful objects with which he is environed, that kindly sympathy with human enjoyments. unconsciously win him back to a certain

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Man. The spirits I have raised abandon me-
The spells which I have studied baffle me—
The remedy I reck'd of tortured me;
It hath no power upon the past, and for
I lean no more on superhuman aid:
The future, till the past be gulf'd in darkness,
It is not of my search.-My mother Earth!
And thou fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Moun-
Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye. [tains,
That openest over all, and unto all
And thou, the bright eye of the universe,
Art a delight-thou shin'st not on my heart.
And you, ye crags, upon whose extreme edge
I stand, and on the torrent's brink beneath
Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs
In dizziness of distance; when a leap,
A stir, a motion, even a breath, would bring
My breast upon its rocky bosom's bed
To rest for ever-wherefore do I pause?
Ay,
Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister,

[An eagle passes.

Whose happy flight is highest into heaven,
Well may'st thou swoop so near me I should be
Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets! thou art gone
Where the eye cannot follow thee; but thine eye
Yet piercest downward, onward, or above
With a pervading vision.-Beautiful!
How beautiful is all this visible world!

How glorious in its action and itself!

But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit

To sink or soar, with our mix'd essence make
A conflict of its elements, and breathe
The breath of degradation and of pride,
Contending with low wants and lofty will
Till our mortality predominates,

And men are what they name not to themselves,
And trust not to each other. Hark! the note,

[The shepherd's pipe in the distance is heard. The natural music of the mountain reedFor here the patriarchal days are not A pastoral fable-pipes in the liberal air, Mix'd with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd; My soul would drink those echoes!-Oh, that I were The viewless spirit of a lovely sound, A living voice, a breathing harmony, A bodiless enjoyment-born and dying With the blest tone which made me!"-pp. 20-22. At this period of his soliloquy, he is descried by a Chamois hunter, who overhears its continuance.

"To be thus

Grey-hair'd with anguish, like these blasted pines,
Wrecks of a single winter, bark less, branchless,
A blighted trunk upon a cursed root,
Which but supplies a feeling to decay-
And to be thus, eternally but thus,
Having been otherwise!

Ye topling crags of ice!
Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down
In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me!
I hear ye momently above, beneath,
Crash with a frequent conflict; but ye pass,
And only fall on things which still would live;
On the young flourishing forest, or the hut
And hamlet of the harmless villager.
The mists boil up around the glaciers! clouds
Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury,
Like foam from the roused ocean of deep Hell,
Whose every wave breaks on a living shore,
Heaped with the damn'd like pebbles-I am giddy!"
pp. 23, 24.

Just as he is about to spring from the cliff, he is seized by the hunter, who forces him away from the dangerous place in the midst of the rising tempest. In the second act, we find him in the cottage of this peasant, and in a still wilder state of disorder. His host offers him wine; but, upon looking at the cup, he exclaims

"Away, away! there's blood upon the brim! Will it then never-never sink in the earth? C. Hun. What dost thou mean? thy senses wander from thee.

Man. I say 'tis blood-my blood! the pure warm

stream

Which ran in the veins of my fathers, and in ours
When we were in our youth, and had one heart,
And loved each other-as we should not love!-
And this was shed: but still it rises up,
Colouring the clouds that shut me out from heaven,
Where thou art not-and I shall never be!
C. Hun. Man of strange words, and some half-
maddening sin, &c.

Man. Think'st thou existence doth depend on
It doth; but actions are our epochs: mine [time?
Have made my days and nights imperishable,
Endless, and all alike, as sands on the shore,
Innumerable atoms; and one desert,
Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break,
But nothing rests, save carcasses and wrecks,
Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness.

C. Hun. Alas! he's mad-but yet I must not leave him.

Man. I would I were-for then the things I see Would be but a distempered dream.

C. Hun. What is it That thou dost see, or think thou look'st upon? Man. Myself, and thee-a peasant of the AlpsThy humble virtues, hospitable home, And spirit patient, pious, proud and free; Thy self-respect, grafted on innocent thoughts; Thy days of health, and nights of sleep; thy toils, By danger dignified, yet guiltless; hopes Of cheerful old age and a quiet grave, With cross and garland over its green turf, And thy grandchildren's love for epitaph; This do I see-and then I look withinIt matters not my soul was scorch'd already!" pp. 27-29.

The following scene is one of the most poetical and most sweetly written in the poem. There is a still and delicious witchery in the tranquillity and seclusion of the place, and the celestial beauty of the Being who reveals herself in the midst of these visible enchantments. In a deep valley among the mountains, Manfred appears alone before a lofty cataract, pealing in the quiet sunshine down the still and everlasting rocks; and

says

"It is not noon-the sunbow's rays still arch The torrent with the many hues of heaven, And roll the sheeted silver's waving column O'er the crag's headlong perpendicular, And fling its lines of foaming light along, And to and fro, like the pale courser's tail, The Giant steed, to be bestrode by Death, As told in the Apocalypse. No eyes But mine now drink this sight of loveliness; I should be sole in this sweet solitude, And with the Spirit of the place divide The homage of these waters.-I will call her. [He takes some of the water into the palm of his hand, and flings it in the air, muttering the adjuration. After a pause, the WITCH OF THE ALPS rises beneath the arch of the sunbow of the torrent.]

Man. Beautiful Spirit! with thy hair of light, And dazzling eyes of glory! in whose form The charms of Earth's least-mortal daughters grow To an unearthly stature, in an essence Of purer elements; while the hues of youth,Carnation'd like a sleeping infant's cheek, Rock'd by the beating of her mother's heart, Upon the lofty glacier's virgin snow, Or the rose tints, which summer's twilight leaves The blush of earth embracing with her heaven,Tinge thy celestial aspect, and make tame The beauties of the sunbow which bends o'er thee! Beautiful Spirit! in thy calm clear brow, Wherein is glass'd serenity of soul, Which of itself shows immortality, I read that thou wilt pardon to a Son Of Earth, whom the abstruser Powers permit At times to commune with them-if that he Avail him of his spells-to call thee thus, And gaze on thee a moment.

Witch.

Son of Earth!

I know thee, and the Powers which give thee power!
I know thee for a man of many thoughts,
And deeds of good and ill, extreme in both,
Fatal and fated in thy sufferings.

I have expected this-what wouldst thou with me? Man. To look upon thy beauty!-nothing further."-pp. 31, 32.

There is something exquisitely beautiful, to our taste, in all this passage; and both the apparition and the dialogue are so managed, that the sense of their improbability is swal lowed up in that of their beauty;-and, without actually believing that such spirits exist or communicate themselves, we feel for the moment as if we stood in their presence.

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