breathed more freely; her heart, though it unceasingly vibrated to anguish, was lefs choked (if fuch an expreffion is allowable) in the air than when in a room, and with the poor equivocal maniac, who was for a while the object of (talked of) charity, and then heard of no more, the unhappy mother of Medora often faid, while deep drawn fighs feemed at once to rend and to relieve her heart, that there was nothing good but liberty and fresh air*.

This indulgence, however, was now for fome days pofitively refused her, unless her guard accompanied her, whose prate. was distracting to her, and who, by way of reconciling the poor languid patient to the lofs of reason, real or fuppofed, thought it very proper to tell her how many ladies she had attended in the fame diforder,

*I believe I have made fome of my heroines (I know not which) fay the fame thing, but it is a fenfation ever fo prefent to me in my own person that it must be forgiven if it is here a repetition, or an inftance of egotifm..

fome

fome of whom had been released after two

or three years, while others had died in the deplorable condition of lunatics. Mrs. Glenmorris had no heart now to attend to the forrows of others; her fenfes, her feelings were all abforbed in her own. Hardly confcious that the world had con-tained any other than her husband and her child, fhe was awake to little else than the consciousness that from Glenmorris. fhe was divided by the great Atlantic: Ocean; and that the wretchedness that had overturned her reason, and was hurry-. ing her faft to the grave, would, as foon: as Glenmorris fhould know it, deprive him of reason, and probably of life.-. Hourly feeling it more and more impoffible to furvive the lofs of Medora, fhe was confcious that Glenmorris could as: ill outlive the certainty either of her death or her difgrace-the difgrace of his adored child would be to him more in、 fupportable than death..

Images of what might have been came incefiantly to her mind, aggravating by contraft

contrast that which was.-If at any time he could prevail on her talkative attendant to be filent, as fhe fat on a bench in the fmall grove of limes, fhe closed her eyes, and wrapping the green farcenet round them, with which her bonnet was enveloped, felt the air blow foftly on her face, and liftened to the fighing of the wind among the trembling leaves, fuch were the fenfations, fuch the foundst fhe felt and heard in the beginning of fummer, when Delmont and Medora were with her, or when he looked towards the wood walk, certain of feeing them return with collections of wild flowers, Medora, perhaps, finging to Delmont one of thofe fimple airs she had learned in America, or Delmont repeating to her fome favourite paffage in one of those poets in whose works he delighted. The breath of Heaven was ftill fresh and pleafant, diffufing the musky scents of fummer declining into autumn; but fancy could not long delude her; the opened her eyes after it

had

had embodied awhile the figures the ufed to fee; fhe looked around her, but how different were the objects from those fo dear to her heart-a woman fet over to control her, from the idea that she had loft her eafon, and was no longer capable of felf-government, and every inanimate object ftrange and foreign to her; fhe neither knew the gloomy place where the was, by whofe means she was conveyed thither, or who fupported herto die unknown here would have been her only with, had fhe been fure that she should never again have seen Medora. -Medora happy as the wife of Delmont, or in the protecting arms of her father.

As from mere inability to refift, the unfortunate Mrs. Glenmorris had funk into paffive filence, and did or submitted to whatever she was defired to do, the perfons about her, and the medical man who attended her, took it for granted that fhe was gradually fettling into melancholy madness, a tranfition very frequent from raving delirium; they there-

fore.

fore by degrees contented themselves with keeping from her every inftrument by which she could injure herself, and infenfibly relaxed in that vigilance which had at the beginning of her recovery fo diftreffed her. Her guard at first trusted her to walk within her fight at some distance; then fatisfied herfelf with looking after her now and then, and at length fuffered her to walk or fit whole hours alone among the lime trees. The attending apothecary (for the phyfician only came in cafes of emergency) perceiving that his interesting patient became calmer in proportion as she was fubjected to lefs reftraint, ordered all appearance of fufpicion to be as much withdrawn as was confistent with her fafety; and nothing contributed fo much as this release from officious perfecution to reflore to the poor mourner the power of thinking, which the irritability of her nerves had fo long taken from her.

By degrees then Mrs. Glenmorris recalled, though it was still confusedly, the circumstances