libacy, exclusively of affection, and
the most perfect fidelity to that affection when it existed.--There is
no reason to doubt that, if Mr. Fuseli had been disengaged at the period
of their acquaintance, he would have been the man of her choice. As it
was, she conceived it both practicable and eligible, to cultivate a
distinguishing affection for him, and to foster it by the endearments of
personal intercourse and a reciprocation of kindness, without departing
in the smallest degree from the rules she prescribed to herself.

In September 1791, she removed from the house she occupied in
George-street, to a large and commodious apartment in Store street,
Bedford-square. She began to think that she had been too rigid, in the
laws of frugality and self-denial with which she set out in her literary
career; and now added to the neatness and cleanliness which she had
always scrupulously observed a certain degree of elegance, and those
temperate indulgences in furniture and accommodation, from which a sound
and uncorrupted taste never fails to derive pleasure.

It was in the month of November in the same year (1791), that the writer
of this narrative was first in company with the person to whom it
relates. He dined with her at a friend's, together with Mr. Thomas Paine
and one or two other persons. The invitation was of his own seeking, his
object being to see the author of the Rights of Man, with whom he had
never before conversed.

The interview was not fortunate. Mary and myself parted, mutually
displeased with each other. I had not read her Rights of Woman. I had
barely looked into her Answer to Burke, and been displeased, as literary
men are apt to be, with a few offences, against grammar and other minute
points of composition. I had therefore little curiosity to see Mrs.
Wollstonecraft, and a very great curiosity to see Thomas Paine. Paine,
in his general habits, is no great talker; and, though he threw in
occasionally some shrewd and striking remarks; the conversation lay
principally between me and Mary. I, of consequence, heard her, very
frequently when I wished to hear Paine.

We touched on a considerable variety of topics, and particularly on the
characters and habits of certain eminent men. Mary, as has already been
observed, had acquired, in a very blameable degree, the practice of
seeing every thing on the gloomy side, and bestowing censure with a
plentiful hand, where circumstances were in any respect doubtful