of government relative to Mary, was characterized by considerable rigour.  She, at length, became convinced of her mistake, and adopted a different plan with her younger daughters.  When, in the Wrongs of Woman, Mary speaks of “the petty cares which obscured the morning of her heroine’s life; continual restraint in the most trivial matters; unconditional submission to orders, which, as a mere child, she soon discovered to be unreasonable, because inconsistent and contradictory; and the being often obliged to sit, in the presence of her parents, for three or four hours together, without daring to utter a word;” she is, I believe, to be considered as copying the outline of the first period of her own existence.

But it was in vain, that the blighting winds of unkindness or indifference, seemed destined to counteract the superiority of Mary’s mind.  It surmounted every obstacle; and, by degrees, from a person little considered in the family, she became in some sort its director and umpire.  The despotism of her education cost her many a heart-ache.  She was not formed to be the contented and unresisting subject of a despot; but I have heard her remark more than once, that, when she felt she had done wrong, the reproof or chastisement of her mother, instead of being a terror to her, she found to be the only thing capable of reconciling her to herself.  The blows of her father on the contrary, which were the mere ebullitions of a passionate temper, instead of humbling her, roused her indignation.  Upon such occasions she felt her superiority, and was apt to betray marks of contempt.  The quickness of her father’s temper, led him sometimes to threaten similar violence towards his wife.  When that was the case, Mary would often throw herself between the despot and his victim, with the purpose to receive upon her own person the blows that might be directed against her mother.  She has even laid whole nights upon the landing-place near their chamber-door, when, mistakenly, or with reason, she apprehended that her father might break out into paroxysms of violence.  The conduct he held towards the members of his family, was of the same kind as that he observed towards animals.  He was for the most part extravagantly fond of them; but, when he was displeased, and this frequently happened, and for very trivial reasons, his anger was alarming.  Mary was what Dr. Johnson would have called, “a very good hater.”  In some instance of passion exercised by her father to one of his dogs, she was accustomed to speak of her emotions of abhorrence, as having risen to agony.  In a word, her conduct during her girlish years, was such, as to extort some portion of affection from her mother, and to hold her father in considerable awe.