body guessed the reason. I have been several times to see her; but
it gives me too much melancholy to see so agreeable a young creature
buried alive. I am not surprised that Nuns have so often inspired
violent passions; the pity one naturally feels for them, when they
seem worthy of another destiny, making an easy way for yet more
tender sentiments. I never in my life had so little charity for the
Roman Catholick (sic) religion, as since I see the misery it
occasions; so many poor unhappy women! and then the gross
superstition of the common people, who are some or other of them, day
and night, offering bits of candle to the wooden figures that are set
up almost in every street. The processions I see very often, are a
pageantry, as offensive, and apparently contradictory to common
sense, as the pagods (sic) of China. God knows whether it be the
_womanly_ spirit of contradiction that works in me; but there never
before was such zeal against popery in the heart of,
Dear madam, &c. &c.

LET. XIII.

TO MR ----.

_Vienna, Oct_. O. S. 1716.

I DESERVE not all the reproaches you make me. If I have some time
without answering your letter, it is not, that I don't know how many
thanks are due to you for it; or that I am stupid enough to prefer
any amusements to the pleasure of hearing from you; but after the
professions of esteem you have so obligingly made me, I cannot help
delaying, as long as I can, shewing you that you are mistaken. If
you are sincere, when you say you expect to be extremely entertained