burst into tears, and complained that I was
altered. We are both great readers in different directions. While I am
hanging over (for the thousandth time) some passage in old Burton, or
one of his strange contemporaries, she is abstracted in some modern
tale, or adventure, whereof our common reading-table is daily fed with
assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative teazes me. I have little concern
in the progress of events. She must have a story--well, ill, or
indifferently told--so there be life stirring in it, and plenty of
good or evil accidents. The fluctuations of fortune in fiction--and
almost in real life--have ceased to interest, or operate but dully
upon me. Out-of-the-way humours and opinions--heads with some
diverting twist in them--the oddities of authorship please me most. My
cousin has a native disrelish of any thing that sounds odd or bizarre.
Nothing goes down with her, that is quaint, irregular, or out of the
road of common sympathy. She "holds Nature more clever." I can pardon
her blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the Religio Medici; but
she must apologise to me for certain disrespectful insinuations, which
she has been pleased to throw out latterly, touching the intellectuals
of a dear favourite of mine, of the last century but one--the thrice
noble, chaste, and virtuous,--but again somewhat fantastical, and
original-brain'd, generous Margaret Newcastle.

It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I
could have wished, to have had for her associates and mine,
free-thinkers--leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies and
systems; but she neither wrangles with, nor accepts, their opinions.
That which was good and venerable to her, when a child, retains its
authority over her mind still. She never juggles or plays tricks with
her understanding.

We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive; and I have
observed the result of our disputes to be almost uniformly this--that
in matters of fact, dates, and circumstances, it turns out, that I was
in the right, and my cousin in the wrong. But where we have differed
upon moral points; upon something proper to be done, or let alone;
whatever heat of opposition, or steadiness of conviction, I set out
with, I am sure always, in the long run, to be brought over to her way
of thinking.

I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with a gentle hand,
for Bridget does not like to be told of her faults. She hath an
awkward trick (to say n