We touched on a considerable variety of topics, and particularly on the characters and habits of certain eminent men.  Mary, as has already been observed, had acquired, in a very blameable degree, the practice of seeing every thing on the gloomy side, and bestowing censure with a plentiful hand, where circumstances were in any respect doubtful.  I, on the contrary, had a strong propensity, to favourable construction, and particularly, where I found unequivocal marks of genius, strongly to incline to the supposition of generous and manly virtue.  We ventilated in this way the characters of Voltaire and others, who have obtained from some individuals an ardent admiration, while the greater number have treated them with extreme moral severity.  Mary was at last provoked to tell me, that praise, lavished in the way that I lavished it, could do no credit either to the commended or the commender.  We discussed some questions on the subject of religion, in which her opinions approached much nearer to the received ones, than mine.  As the conversation proceeded, I became dissatisfied with the tone of my own share in it.  We touched upon all topics, without treating forcibly and connectedly upon any.  Meanwhile, I did her the justice, in giving an account of the conversation to a party in which I supped, though I was not sparing of my blame, to yield her the praise of a person of active and independent thinking.  On her side, she did me no part of what perhaps I considered as justice.

We met two or three times in the course of the following year, but made a very small degree of progress towards a cordial acquaintance.

In the close of the year 1792, Mary went over to France, where she continued to reside for upwards of two years.  One of her principal inducements to this step, related, I believe, to Mr. Fuseli.  She had, at first, considered it as reasonable and judicious, to cultivate what I may be permitted to call, a Platonic affection for him; but she did not, in the sequel, find all the satisfaction in this plan, which she had originally expected from it.  It was in vain that she enjoyed much pleasure in his society, and that she enjoyed it frequently.  Her ardent imagination was continually conjuring up pictures of the happiness she should have found, if fortune had favoured their more intimate union.  She felt herself formed for domestic affection, and all those tender charities, which men of sensibility have constantly treated as the dearest band of human society.  General conversation and society could not satisfy her.  She felt herself alone, as it were, in the great mass of her species; and she repined when she reflected, that the best years of her life were spent in this comfortless solitude.  These ideas made the cordial intercourse of Mr. Fuseli, which had at first been one of her greatest pleasures, a source of perpetual torment to her.  She conceived it necessary to snap the chain of this association in her mind; and, for that purpose, determined to seek a new climate, and mingle in different scenes.