principles; how then can they be called good? The pattern of all
goodness went about _doing_ good. Wrapped up in themselves, the nuns
only thought of inferior gratifications. And a number of intrigues were
carried on to accelerate certain points on which their hearts were
fixed:

Such as obtaining offices of trust or authority; or avoiding those that
were servile or laborious. In short, when they could be neither wives
nor mothers, they aimed at being superiors, and became the most selfish
creatures in the world: the passions that were curbed gave strength to
the appetites, or to those mean passions which only tend to provide for
the gratification of them. Was this seclusion from the world? or did
they conquer its vanities or avoid its vexations?

In these abodes the unhappy individual, who, in the first paroxysm of
grief flies to them for refuge, finds too late she took a wrong step.
The same warmth which determined her will make her repent; and sorrow,
the rust of the mind, will never have a chance of being rubbed off by
sensible conversation, or new-born affections of the heart.

She will find that those affections that have once been called forth and
strengthened by exercise, are only smothered, not killed, by
disappointment; and that in one form or other discontent will corrode
the heart, and produce those maladies of the imagination, for which
there is no specific.

The community at large Mary disliked; but pitied many of them whose
private distresses she was informed of; and to pity and relieve were the
same things with her.