olish proposal of marriage for mercenary
considerations, which the gentleman here mentioned thought proper to
recommend to her. The two letters which immediately follow, are addressed
to the gentleman himself.

EXTRACT

OF THE

CAVE OF FANCY.

A TALE.

* * * * *

[_Begun to be written in the year 1787, but never completed_]

CAVE OF FANCY.

CHAP. I.

YE who expect constancy where every thing is changing, and peace in the
midst of tumult, attend to the voice of experience, and mark in time the
footsteps of disappointment, or life will be lost in desultory wishes,
and death arrive before the dawn of wisdom.

In a sequestered valley, surrounded by rocky mountains that intercepted
many of the passing clouds, though sunbeams variegated their ample sides,
lived a sage, to whom nature had unlocked her most hidden secrets. His
hollow eyes, sunk in their orbits, retired from the view of vulgar
objects, and turned inwards, overleaped the boundary prescribed to human
knowledge. Intense thinking during fourscore and ten years, had whitened
the scattered locks on his head, which, like the summit of the distant
mountain, appeared to be bound by an eternal frost.

On the sandy waste behind the mountains, the track of ferocious beasts
might be traced, and sometimes the mangled limbs which they left,
attracted a hovering flight of birds of prey. An extensive wood the sage
had forced to rear its head in a soil by no means congenial, and the firm
trunks of the trees seemed to frown with defiance on time; though the
spoils of innumerable summers covered the roots, which resembled fangs;
so closely did they cling to the unfriendly sand, where serpents hissed,
and snakes, rolling out their vast folds, inhaled the noxious vapours.
The ravens and owls who inhabited the solitude, gave also a thicker gloom
to the everlasting twilight, and the croaking of the former a monotony,
in unison with the gloom; whilst lions and tygers, shunning even this
faint semblance of day, sought the dark caverns, and at night, when they
shook off sleep, their roaring would make the whole valley resound,
confounded with the screechings of the bird of night.

One mountain rose sublime, towering above all, on the craggy sides of
which a few sea-weeds grew, washed by the ocean, that with tumultuous
roar rushed to assault, and even undermine, the huge barrier that stopped
its progress; and ever and anon a po