ess
it be of the agonized sorrow in the face of Guido's Beatrice Cenci. No
one can wonder that she doubted if marriage can be the highest possible
relationship between the sexes, when it is remembered that for years she
had constantly before her, proofs of the power man possesses, by sheer
physical strength and simple brutality, to destroy the happiness of an
entire household.

It was fortunate for her that she spent these wretched years in or very
near the country. She could wear off the effects of the stifling home
atmosphere by races over neighboring heaths, or by walks through lanes
and woods. Constant exercise in the open air is the best of stimulants.
It helped her to escape the many ills which childish flesh is heir to; it
lessened the morbid tendency of her nature; and it developed an energy of
character which proved her greatest safeguard against her sensitive and
excitable temperament. Besides this, she seems to have taken real delight
in her out-of-doors life. If at a later age she loved to sit in solitude
and listen to the singing of a robin and the falling of the leaves, she
must, as a child, have possessed much of that imaginative power which
transforms all nature into fairyland. If, in the bitter consciousness
that she was a betrayed and much-sinned-against woman, she could still
find moments of exquisite pleasure in wandering through woods and over
rocks, such haunts must have been as dear to her when she sought in them
escape from her young misery. It is probable that she refers to herself
when she makes her heroine, Maria, say, "An enthusiastic fondness for the
varying charms of nature is the first sentiment I recollect."

Mary's existence up to 1775 had been, save when disturbed by family
storms, quiet, lonely, and uneventful. As yet no special incident had
occurred in it, nor had she been awakened to intellectual activity. But
in Hoxton she contracted a friendship which, though it was with a girl of
her own age, was always esteemed by her as the chief and leading event in
her existence. This it was which first aroused her love of study and of
independence, and opened a channel for the outpouring of her too-long
suppressed affections. Her love for Fanny Blood was the spark which
kindled the latent fire of her genius. Her arrival in Hoxton, therefore,
marks the first important era in her life.

She owed this new pleasure to Mr. Clare, a clergyman, and his wife, who
lived next to the Wollstonecrafts i