een one of
her greatest pleasures, a source of perpetual torment to her. She
conceived it necessary to snap the chain of this association in her
mind; and, for that purpose, determined to seek a new climate, and
mingle in different scenes.

It is singular, that during her residence in Store street, which lasted
more than twelve months, she produced nothing, except a few articles in
the Analytical Review. Her literary meditations were chiefly employed
upon the Sequel to the Rights of Woman; but she has scarcely left behind
her a single paper, that can, with any certainty, be assigned to have
had this destination.

CHAP. VII.

1792-1795.

The original plan of Mary, respecting her residence in France, had no
precise limits in the article of duration; the single purpose she had in
view being that of an endeavour to heal her distempered mind. She did
not proceed so far as even to discharge her lodging in London; and, to
some friends who saw her immediately before her departure, she spoke
merely of an absence of six weeks.

It is not to be wondered at, that her excursion did not originally seem
to produce the effects she had expected from it. She was in a land of
strangers; she had no acquaintance; she had even to acquire the power of
receiving and communicating ideas with facility in the language of the
country. Her first residence was in a spacious mansion to which she had
been invited, but the master of which (monsieur Fillietaz) was absent at
the time of her arrival. At first therefore she found herself surrounded
only with servants. The gloominess of her mind communicated its own
colour to the objects she saw; and in this temper she began a series of
Letters on the Present Character of the French Nation, one of which she
forwarded to her publisher, and which appears in the collection of her
posthumous works. This performance she soon after discontinued; and it
is, as she justly remarks, tinged with the saturnine temper which at
that time pervaded her mind.

Mary carried with her introductions to several agreeable families in
Paris. She renewed her acquaintance with Paine. There also subsisted a
very sincere friendship between her and Helen Maria Williams, author of
a collection of poems of uncommon merit, who at that time resided in
Paris. Another person, whom Mary always spoke of in terms of ardent
commendation, both for the excellence of his disposition, and the force
of his genius, was a count Slabrend