delicious sensibility, whose minds seem almost of too fine a texture to
encounter the vicissitudes of human affairs, to whom pleasure is
transport, and disappointment is agony indescribable. This character is
finely pourtrayed by the author of the Sorrows of Werter. Mary was in
this respect a female Werter.

She brought then, in the present instance, a wounded and sick heart, to
take refuge in the bosom of a chosen friend. Let it not however be
imagined, that she brought a heart, querulous, and ruined in its taste
for pleasure. No; her whole character seemed to change with a change of
fortune. Her sorrows, the depression of her spirits, were forgotten, and
she assumed all the simplicity and the vivacity of a youthful mind. She
was like a serpent upon a rock, that casts its slough, and appears again
with the brilliancy, the sleekness, and the elastic activity of its
happiest age. She was playful, full of confidence, kindness and
sympathy. Her eyes assumed new lustre, and her cheeks new colour and
smoothness. Her voice became chearful; her temper overflowing with
universal kindness; and that smile of bewitching tenderness from day to
day illuminated her countenance, which all who knew her will so well
recollect, and which won, both heart and soul, the affection of almost
every one that beheld it.

Mary now reposed herself upon a person, of whose honour and principles
she had the most exalted idea. She nourished an individual affection,
which she saw no necessity of subjecting to restraint; and a heart like
her's was not formed to nourish affection by halves. Her conception of
Mr. Imlay's "tenderness and worth, had twisted him closely round her
heart;" and she "indulged the thought, that she had thrown out some
tendrils, to cling to the elm by which she wished to be supported." This
was "talking a new language to her;" but, "conscious that she was not a