‘Oh, ye immortal Spirits of Sentiment!’ cried the impassioned Clarissa; ‘Hear, oh! hear, the profanation which has been offered to your Muses! Divine Petrarch! where, if Sentiment had not existed, where would have been found those heart-piercing notes, which, like the harmonious trilling of the nightingale, were wafted on the evening breeze, in soft murmurings, through the woods of Vauclusa? In the absence of Sentiment, where, oh! where had been the immortality of Rousseau? The genius of his inspiration flown, in vain should we have sought for those polished periods, which will melt the heart to tenderness and affection – Eloise – St. Preux – Unfortunate Lovers! your sorrows would not have been excited by him; hearts of sensibility would not have known the pause of exquisite rapture; they would not have shed the tear of exquisite, of refined sympathy. Goethe too, then beloved writer! I call on thee! Where would have been the ray of light, which illumined thy pen, if Sentiment had been unknown to thee? Was not the affection of Werter the offspring of Sentiment alone? Was it not the refinement of passion, acting on the soul of sensibility? Oh! immortal and beatified lover of Charlotte! how often have I melted over your virtues, your passion, and your melancholy fate! – How often have I contemplated on the soul-harrowing picture of thy death! – How often in imagination descended with thee to the tomb!

‘Sterne, too, thou genius of Sentiment, thou friend of all created beings, was it not Sentiment which warmed thy heart, when the oath of Uncle Toby blotted thy immortal page? And is it not to Sentiment, to Sentiment alone, that we owe the life of our souls, the most precious of our existing moments.