orne Mountains fading in purple distance beyond its blue waters
on the other, formed a beautiful prospect. A pine wood on one side of
the grounds led down to the foot of the grassy hill upon which the house
stood, and to a charming wilderness called the Dell: a sylvan recess
behind the rocky margin of the sea, from which it was completely
sheltered, whose hollow depth, carpeted with grass and curtained with
various growth of trees, was the especial domain of my dear H----. A
crystal spring of water rose in this "bosky dell," and answered with its
tiny tinkle the muffled voice of the ocean breaking on the shore beyond.
The place was perfectly lovely, and here we sat together and devised, as
the old word was, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things
above heaven, and things below earth, and things quite beyond ourselves,
till we were well-nigh beside ourselves; and it was not the fault of my
metaphysical friend, but of my utter inability to keep pace with her
mental processes, if our argument did not include every point of that
which Milton has assigned to the forlorn disputants of his infernal
regions. My departure from Dublin ended these happy hours of
companionship, and I exchanged that academe and my beloved Plato in
petticoats for my play-house work at Liverpool. The following letter was
in answer to one Mrs. Jameson wrote me upon the subject of a lady whom
she had recommended to my mother as a governess for my sister, who was
now in her sixteenth year.

LIVERPOOL, August 16, 1830.
MY DEAR MRS. JAMESON,

Were it not that I have a great opinion both of your kindness and
reasonableness, I should feel rather uncomfortable at the period
which has elapsed since I ought to have written to you; but I am
very sorry not to have been able sooner to reply to your last kind
letter. I shall begin by answering that which interested me most in
it, which you will easily believe was what regarded my dear A----
and the person into whose hands she is about to be committed. In
proportion to the value of the gem is the dread one feels of the
flaws and injuries it may receive in the process of cutting and
polishing; and this, of course, not in this case alone, but that of
every child who still is parent to the man (or woman). My mother
said in one of her letters, "I have engaged a lady to be A----'s
governess." Of