ed and good tempered too; but she turned out
such an inveterate stumbler that I have been obliged to give up riding
her, as, of course, my neck is worth more to me even than my health. So,
this morning I have been taking a most delectable eight miles' trot upon
a huge, high, heavy carriage-horse, who all but shakes my soul out of
my body, but who is steady upon his legs, and whom I shall therefore
patronize till I can be more _genteelly_ mounted with safety.

You bid me study Natural Philosophy ... and ask me what I read; but
since my baby has made her entrance into the world, I neither read,
write, nor cast up accounts, but am as idle, though not nearly as well
dressed, as the lilies of the field; my reading, if ever I take to such
an occupation again, is like, I fear, to be, as it always has been,
rambling, desultory, and unprofitable....

Come, I will take as a sample of my studies, the books just now lying on
my table, all of which I have been reading lately: Alfieri's Life, by
himself, a curious and interesting work; Washington Irving's last book,
"A Tour on the Prairies," rather an ordinary book, upon a not ordinary
subject, but not without sufficiently interesting matter in it too; Dr.
Combe's "Principles of Physiology"; and a volume of Marlowe's plays,
containing "Dr. Faustus." I have just finished Hayward's Translation of
Goethe's "Faust," and wanted to see the old English treatment of the
subject. I have read Marlowe's play with more curiosity than pleasure.
This is, after all, but a small sample of what I read; but if you
remember the complexion of my studies when I was a girl at Heath Farm,
and read Jeremy Taylor and Byron together, I can only say they are still
apt to be of the same heterogeneous quality. But my brain is kept in a
certain state of activity by them, and that, I suppose, is one of the
desirable results of reading. As for writing anything, or things--good
gracious! no, I should think not indeed! It is true, if you allude to
the mechanical process of caligraphy, here is close to my elbow a big
book, in which I enter all passages I meet with in my various readings
tending to elucidate obscure parts of the Bible: I do not mean disputed
points of theology, mysteries, or significations more or less mystical,
but simply any notices whatever which I meet with relating to the
customs of the Jews, their history, their language, the natural features
of their country; and so bearing upon my reading of pa