of discontent, with what
eagerness did she endeavour to shorten the long days, which left no
traces behind! She seemed to be sailing on the vast ocean of life,
without seeing any land-mark to indicate the progress of time; to find
employment was then to find variety, the animating principle of nature.

CHAP. II.

EARNESTLY as Maria endeavoured to soothe, by reading, the anguish of her
wounded mind, her thoughts would often wander from the subject she was
led to discuss, and tears of maternal tenderness obscured the reasoning
page. She descanted on "the ills which flesh is heir to," with
bitterness, when the recollection of her babe was revived by a tale of
fictitious woe, that bore any resemblance to her own; and her imagination
was continually employed, to conjure up and embody the various phantoms
of misery, which folly and vice had let loose on the world. The loss of
her babe was the tender string; against other cruel remembrances she
laboured to steel her bosom; and even a ray of hope, in the midst of her
gloomy reveries, would sometimes gleam on the dark horizon of futurity,
while persuading herself that she ought to cease to hope, since happiness
was no where to be found.--But of her child, debilitated by the grief
with which its mother had been assailed before it saw the light, she
could not think without an impatient struggle.

"I, alone, by my active tenderness, could have saved," she would exclaim,
"from an early blight, this sweet blossom; and, cherishing it, I should
have had something still to love."

In proportion as other expectations were torn from her, this tender one
had been fondly clung to, and knit into her heart.

The books she had obtained, were soon devoured, by one who had no other
resource to escape from sorrow, and the feverish dreams of ideal
wretchedness or felicity, which equally weaken the intoxicated
sensibility. Writing was then the only alternative, and she wrote some
rhapsodies descriptive of the state of her mind; but the events of her
past life pressing on her, she resolved circumstantially to relate them,
with the sentiments that experience, and more matured reason, would
naturally suggest. They might perhaps instruct her daughter, and shield
her from the misery, the tyranny, her mother knew not how to avoid.

This thought gave life to her diction, her soul flowed into it, and she
soon found the task of recollecting almost obliterated impressions very
interesting. She