The few weeks that I spent in London were the most miserable of my life:  a great city is a frightful habitation to one sorrowing.  The sunset and the gentle moon, the blessed motion of the leaves and the murmuring of waters are all sweet physicians to a distempered mind.  The soul is expanded and drinks in quiet, a lulling medecine—­to me it was as the sight of the lovely water snakes to the bewitched mariner—­in loving and blessing Nature I unawares, called down a blessing on my own soul.  But in a city all is closed shut like a prison, a wiry prison from which you can peep at the sky only.  I can not describe to you what were [sic] the frantic nature of my sensations while I resided there; I was often on the verge of madness.  Nay, when I look back on many of my wild thoughts, thoughts with which actions sometimes endeavoured to keep pace; when I tossed my hands high calling down the cope of heaven to fall on me and bury me; when I tore my hair and throwing it to the winds cried, “Ye are free, go seek my father!” And then, like the unfortunate Constance, catching at them again and tying them up, that nought might find him if I might not.  How, on my knees I have fancied myself close to my father’s grave and struck the ground in anger that it should cover him from me.  Oft when I have listened with gasping attention for the sound of the ocean mingled with my father’s groans; and then wept untill my strength was gone and I was calm and faint, when I have recollected all this I have asked myself if this were not madness.  While in London these and many other dreadful thoughts too harrowing for words were my portion:  I lost all this suffering when I was free; when I saw the wild heath around me, and the evening star in the west, then I could weep, gently weep, and be at peace.

Do not mistake me; I never was really mad.  I was always conscious of my state when my wild thoughts seemed to drive me to insanity, and never betrayed them to aught but silence and solitude.  The people around me saw nothing of all this.  They only saw a poor girl broken in spirit, who spoke in a low and gentle voice, and from underneath whose downcast lids tears would sometimes steal which she strove to hide.  One who loved to be alone, and shrunk from observation; who never smiled; oh, no!  I never smiled—­and that was all.

Well, I escaped.  I left my guardian’s house and I was never heard of again; it was believed from the letters that I left and other circumstances that I planned that I had destroyed myself.  I was sought after therefore with less care than would otherwise have been the case; and soon all trace and memory of me was lost.  I left London in a small vessel bound for a port in the north of England.  And now having succeeded in my attempt, and being quite alone peace returned to me.  The sea was calm and the vessel moved gently onwards, I sat upon deck under the open canopy of heaven and methought I was an altered creature.  Not the wild, raving & most