Mary | Page 6

she taste unmixed delight; her joys, her ecstacies arose
from genius.
She was now fifteen, and she wished to receive the holy sacrament; and
perusing the scriptures, and discussing some points of doctrine which
puzzled her, she would sit up half the night, her favourite time for
employing her mind; she too plainly perceived that she saw through a
glass darkly; and that the bounds set to stop our intellectual researches,
is one of the trials of a probationary state.

But her affections were roused by the display of divine mercy; and she
eagerly desired to commemorate the dying love of her great benefactor.
The night before the important day, when she was to take on herself her
baptismal vow, she could not go to bed; the sun broke in on her
meditations, and found her not exhausted by her watching.
The orient pearls were strewed around--she hailed the morn, and sung
with wild delight, Glory to God on high, good will towards men. She
was indeed so much affected when she joined in the prayer for her
eternal preservation, that she could hardly conceal her violent emotions;
and the recollection never failed to wake her dormant piety when
earthly passions made it grow languid.
These various movements of her mind were not commented on, nor
were the luxuriant shoots restrained by culture. The servants and the
poor adored her.
In order to be enabled to gratify herself in the highest degree, she
practiced the most rigid oeconomy, and had such power over her
appetites and whims, that without any great effort she conquered them
so entirely, that when her understanding or affections had an object, she
almost forgot she had a body which required nourishment.
This habit of thinking, this kind of absorption, gave strength to the
passions.
We will now enter on the more active field of life.

CHAP. V.
A few months after Mary was turned of seventeen, her brother was
attacked by a violent fever, and died before his father could reach the
school.
She was now an heiress, and her mother began to think her of
consequence, and did not call her the child. Proper masters were sent
for; she was taught to dance, and an extraordinary master procured to

perfect her in that most necessary of all accomplishments.
A part of the estate she was to inherit had been litigated, and the heir of
the person who still carried on a Chancery suit, was only two years
younger than our heroine. The fathers, spite of the dispute, frequently
met, and, in order to settle it amicably, they one day, over a bottle,
determined to quash it by a marriage, and, by uniting the two estates, to
preclude all farther enquiries into the merits of their different claims.
While this important matter was settling, Mary was otherwise
employed. Ann's mother's resources were failing; and the ghastly
phantom, poverty, made hasty strides to catch them in his clutches. Ann
had not fortitude enough to brave such accumulated misery; besides,
the canker-worm was lodged in her heart, and preyed on her health. She
denied herself every little comfort; things that would be no sacrifice
when a person is well, are absolutely necessary to alleviate bodily pain,
and support the animal functions.
There were many elegant amusements, that she had acquired a relish
for, which might have taken her mind off from its most destructive bent;
but these her indigence would not allow her to enjoy: forced then, by
way of relaxation, to play the tunes her lover admired, and handle the
pencil he taught her to hold, no wonder his image floated on her
imagination, and that taste invigorated love.
Poverty, and all its inelegant attendants, were in her mother's abode;
and she, though a good sort of a woman, was not calculated to banish,
by her trivial, uninteresting chat, the delirium in which her daughter
was lost.
This ill-fated love had given a bewitching softness to her manners, a
delicacy so truly feminine, that a man of any feeling could not behold
her without wishing to chase her sorrows away. She was timid and
irresolute, and rather fond of dissipation; grief only had power to make
her reflect.
In every thing it was not the great, but the beautiful, or the pretty, that
caught her attention. And in composition, the polish of style, and

harmony of numbers, interested her much more than the flights of
genius, or abstracted speculations.
She often wondered at the books Mary chose, who, though she had a
lively imagination, would frequently study authors whose works were
addressed to the understanding. This liking taught her to arrange her
thoughts, and argue with herself, even when under the influence of the
most violent passions.
Ann's misfortunes and ill health were strong ties to bind Mary