at the fame time he feel the fharpeft pangs of corrofive hunger, he will avert his eye from it with difdain, or gaze upon the luxurious banquet with calm indifference. Let ftrains of the most exquifite melody warble around him, the paffages of his ears are impervious to founds, which, in other breafts, would awaken ecstasy and endanger reason. Let nymphs of the most tranfcendent beauty, blooming, lovely, and wanton, as those that sported of old with Creefhna on the hallowed plains of Mathura, weave in his prefence the airy dance, the Saniaffi is confcious to no tumults of rifing paffion, but continues, in thought and act, Chafte as the icicle That's curdled by the froft from purest snow, And hangs on Dian's temple. The most delicious odours, exhaled from the fpice-beds of a garden of Oriental perfumes, have no fragrance for him; to the most beautiful colours he is blind; amidst the most excruciating torments he is dumb. In effect, by long continued perfeverance in thefe laborious but unnatural efforts to fubdue his mortal part, the corporeal functions by degrees lofe their energy, and the mental faculties are clouded and overwhelmed. Grown torpid through inactivity, and wrapt in holy infenfibility, the Saniaffi is affected by nothing that occurs within the bounded circle of human nature. He has no intereft in any object below the stars, the native region of his afpiring foul. In vain, therefore, to him do the feafons revolve on this terreftrial globe; in vain does the fun enlighten it with his all-vivifying ray; in vain do the nutritious dews and genial fhowers defcend and fertilize it. He feels no more delight, when returning spring arrays its renovated aspect in beauty and verdure, than he is capable of emotion, when its arid furface is parched with continued drought and the famished herd perifh by thousands on the fterile plains. He is no more refreshed by the cooling zephyr that wafts vigour and falubrity to its fainting inhabitants, than he is annoyed by the burning winds from the defert, that bring peftilence and death in their train, and sweep whole nations of his fellowcreatures to the gulph of destruction. Inflexibly adhering to this refolute indifference, the avenues of his foul are barred a gainst the infidious affaults of those delufive paffions that fecretly undermine and often fubvert the fortitude of the fublimest philofophers and the most rigid difciplinarians. He He is no more to be foothed by the fuggeftions of adulation in its most pleasing form, than he is to be terrified by the loudest clamours of reproach. Ambition and power can have no influence over the man who looks down upon thrones with fcorn, who confiders the scanty and tattered fragment of yellow linen that girds his loins as of value far more tranfcendent than the embroidered robe of majefty; and who looks upon himself to be a portion of that Deity, into whose infinite effence he is foon to be wholly and eternally absorbed. Avarice cannot influence the mind that is rich in the countless treasures of immortality; a mind that efteems gold as drofs, and to whom rubies have loft their luftre and value. In fine, the highest diftinction, to which the Saniaffi afpires, is a ftate of invincible apathy. By long habits of indifference he becomes inanimate as a piece of wood or stone ; and, though he mechanically respires the vital air, he is to all the purposes of active life defunct. In confequence of these unexampled feverities, and this invincible abstraction from every thing finite, the veneration which the whole Indian nation entertain for the Saniaffis is beyond all conception. Veefhnu himself reveres them: to whatsoever object they Ttt 2 |