When she could not any longer indulge the caprices of fancy one way, she tried another.  The Platonic Marriage, Eliza Warwick, and some other interesting tales were perused with eagerness.  Nothing could be more natural than the developement of the passions, nor more striking than the views of the human heart.  What delicate struggles! and uncommonly pretty turns of thought!  The picture that was found on a bramble-bush, the new sensitive-plant, or tree, which caught the swain by the upper-garment, and presented to his ravished eyes a portrait.—­Fatal image!—­It planted a thorn in a till then insensible heart, and sent a new kind of a knight-errant into the world.  But even this was nothing to the catastrophe, and the circumstance on which it hung, the hornet settling on the sleeping lover’s face.  What a heart-rending accident!  She planted, in imitation of those susceptible souls, a rose bush; but there was not a lover to weep in concert with her, when she watered it with her tears.—­Alas!  Alas!

If my readers would excuse the sportiveness of fancy, and give me credit for genius, I would go on and tell them such tales as would force the sweet tears of sensibility to flow in copious showers down beautiful cheeks, to the discomposure of rouge, &c. &c.  Nay, I would make it so interesting, that the fair peruser should beg the hair-dresser to settle the curls himself, and not interrupt her.

She had besides another resource, two most beautiful dogs, who shared her bed, and reclined on cushions near her all the day.  These she watched with the most assiduous care, and bestowed on them the warmest caresses.  This fondness for animals was not that kind of attendrissement which makes a person take pleasure in providing for the subsistence and comfort of a living creature; but it proceeded from vanity, it gave her an opportunity of lisping out the prettiest French expressions of ecstatic fondness, in accents that had never been attuned by tenderness.

She was chaste, according to the vulgar acceptation of the word, that is, she did not make any actual faux pas; she feared the world, and was indolent; but then, to make amends for this seeming self-denial, she read all the sentimental novels, dwelt on the love-scenes, and, had she thought while she read, her mind would have been contaminated; as she accompanied the lovers to the lonely arbors, and would walk with them by the clear light of the moon.  She wondered her husband did not stay at home.  She was jealous—­why did he not love her, sit by her side, squeeze her hand, and look unutterable things?  Gentle reader, I will tell thee; they neither of them felt what they could not utter.  I will not pretend to say that they always annexed an idea to a word; but they had none of those feelings which are not easily analyzed.

CHAP.  II.