voice was
but the shadow of a sound, and she had, to complete her delicacy, so
relaxed her nerves, that she became a mere nothing.

Many such noughts are there in the female world! yet she had a good
opinion of her own merit,--truly, she said long prayers,--and sometimes
read her Week's Preparation: she dreaded that horrid place vulgarly
called _hell_, the regions below; but whether her's was a mounting
spirit, I cannot pretend to determine; or what sort of a planet would
have been proper for her, when she left her _material_ part in this
world, let metaphysicians settle; I have nothing to say to her unclothed
spirit.

As she was sometimes obliged to be alone, or only with her French
waiting-maid, she sent to the metropolis for all the new publications,
and while she was dressing her hair, and she could turn her eyes from
the glass, she ran over those most delightful substitutes for bodily
dissipation, novels. I say bodily, or the animal soul, for a rational
one can find no employment in polite circles. The glare of lights, the
studied inelegancies of dress, and the compliments offered up at the
shrine of false beauty, are all equally addressed to the senses.

When she could not any longer indulge the caprices of fancy one way, she
tried another. The Platonic Marriage, Eliza Warwick, and some other
interesting tales were perused with eagerness. Nothing could be more
natural than the developement of the passions, nor more striking than
the views of the human heart. What delicate struggles! and uncommonly
pretty turns of thought! The picture that was found on a bramble-bush,
the new sensitive-plant, or tree, which caught the swain by the
upper-garment, and presented to his ravished eyes a portrait.--Fatal
image!--It planted a thorn in a till then insensible heart, and sent a
new kind of a knight-errant into the world. But even this was nothing to
the catastrophe, and the circumstance on which it hung, the hornet
settling on the sleeping lover's face. What a _heart-rending_ accident!
She planted, in imitation of those susceptible souls, a rose bush; but
there was not a lover to weep in concert with her, when she watered it
with her tears.--Alas! Alas!

If my readers would excuse the sportiveness of fancy, and give me credit
for genius, I would go on and tell them such tales as would force the
sweet tears of sensibility to flow in copious showers down beautiful
cheeks, to the discomposure of rouge, &c. &c. Nay, I would