ted from the company present and their conversation. But if
composing a piece of some length, she wished to be entirely alone; she
shut herself into her room, darkened the windows, and in summer placed
her Aeolian harp in the window:" (thus by artificial excitement, feeding
the fire that consumed her.) "In those pieces on which she bestowed more
than ordinary pains, she was very secret; and if they were, by any
accident, discovered in their unfinished state, she seldom completed
them, and often destroyed them. She cared little for any of her works
after they were completed: some, indeed, she preserved with care for
future correction, but a great proportion she destroyed: very many that
are preserved, were rescued from the flames by her mother. Of a complete
poem, in five cantos, called 'Rodri,' and composed when she was thirteen
years of age, a single canto, and part of another, are all that are
saved from a destruction which she supposed had obliterated every
vestige of it."

She was often in danger, when walking, from carriages, &c., in
consequence of her absence of mind. When engaged in a poem of some
length, she has often forgotten her meals. A single incident,
illustrating this trait in her character, is worth relating:--She went
out early one morning to visit a neighbour, promising to be at home to
dinner. The neighbour being absent, she requested to be shown into the
library. There she became so absorbed in her book, standing, with her
bonnet unremoved, that the darkness of the coming night first reminded
her she had forgotten her meals, and expended the entire day in reading.

She was peculiarly sensitive to music. There was one song (it was
Moore's Farewell to his Harp) to which she "took a special fancy;" she
wished to hear it only at twilight--thus, with that same perilous love
of excitement which made her place the windharp in the window when she
was composing, seeking to increase the effect which the song produced
upon a nervous system, already diseasedly susceptible; for it is said,
that whenever she heard this song she became cold, pale, and almost
fainting; yet it was her favourite of all songs, and gave occasion to
these verses, addressed, in her fifteenth year, to her sister.

When evening spreads her shades around,
And darkness fills the arch of heaven;
When not a murmur, not a sound
To Fancy's sportive ear is given;

When the broad orb of heaven is bright,
And looks around wi