e no sex;
they can surprise by no new miracles; they can confer no privilege:
Corinna has ceased to be a woman--she is only an author; and it may be
foreseen that many will repay themselves for former complaisance, by a
severity to which the extravagance of previous praises may perhaps give
the colour of truth. The latest posterity--for to the latest posterity
they will assuredly descend--will have to pronounce upon her various
productions; and the longer the vista through which they are seen, the
more accurately minute will be the object, the more certain the justice,
of the decision. She will enter into that existence in which the great
writers of all ages and nations are, as it were, associated in a world
of their own, and, from that superior sphere, shed their eternal
influence for the control and consolation of mankind. But the individual
will gradually disappear as the author is more distinctly seen; some
one, therefore, of all those whom the charms of involuntary wit, and of
easy hospitality, attracted within the friendly circles of Coppet,
should rescue from oblivion those virtues which, although they are said
to love the shade, are, in fact, more frequently chilled than excited by
the domestic cares of private life. Some one should be found to portray
the unaffected graces with which she adorned those dearer relationships,
the performance of whose duties is rather discovered amongst the
interior secrets, than seen in the outward management, of family
intercourse; and which, indeed, it requires the delicacy of genuine
affection to qualify for the eye of an indifferent spectator. Some one
should be found, not to celebrate, but to describe, the amiable mistress
of an open mansion, the centre of a society, ever varied, and always
pleased, the creator of which, divested of the ambition and the arts of
public rivalry, shone forth only to give fresh animation to those around
her. The mother tenderly affectionate and tenderly beloved, the friend
unboundedly generous, but still esteemed, the charitable patroness of
all distress, cannot be forgotten by those whom she cherished, and
protected, and fed. Her loss will be mourned the most where she was
known the best; and, to the sorrows of very many friends, and more
dependants, may be offered the disinterested regret of a stranger, who,
amidst the sublimer scenes of the Leman lake, received his chief
satisfaction from contemplating the engaging qualities of the
incomparable