terwards established her in her school at K----.
They supplied her with these dangerous volumes that exalted
passion--love in excess--above all the aims and pursuits of
life: represented her who loves most madly as most worthy of
sympathy; and even, too often, crowned the heroine with the palm of
self-martyrdom--making suicide itself no longer a crime or folly, but
almost a virtue, under certain contingencies.

When poverty increased, the activity of her powerful intellect was
brought into display, as much as her personal activity had been, in
devising resources. She had acquired some skill in drawing, through the
kindness of the neighbouring gentry, and she improved herself so far as
to execute very respectable drawings of the ruins of Kilgerran Castle,
on her own river, and other fine scenes of Wales; and these were sold
for her (or rather for her parents) by others, at fairs and wakes, where
she never appeared herself. When residing at the village, her wheel was
heard in the morning before others were stirring, and at late night,
after every other one was still. Her little light, gleaming in the lofty
village, espied between the hanging trees, was the guiding star of the
belated fisher up the narrow goat's-path which led to the village, who
could always obtain light for his pipe at "_Miss Bevan's_, the school,"
when not a casement had exhibited a taper for hours. But the evil of all
this wear and tear of mind and body was, that it maintained an unnatural
state of excitement in the one, and of weakness (disguised by that fever
of imagination) in the other. Sleep, the preserver of health and
tranquillity of mind, was exchanged for lonely emotions excited by night
reading. She was weeping over the dramatist's fifth act of tragedy, or
the romancist's more morbid appeals to the passions, while nature
demanded rest. Then an accidental meeting with the young harper--he
recovering a book she had dropped into the Tivy out of her hand, from
having fallen asleep through exertion, and restoring it with a grace
quite romance-hero like--produced a new era, and new excitement--that of
the heart. Thenceforth, she became "of imagination all compact," however
her strong sense preserved her purity and virtue. But no more dangerous
lover could be imagined than such a loose hanger-on, rather than member,
of society as David the _Telynwr_--for _his_ nature was _hers_; except,
perhaps, in virtuous resolution, he was a female Winifred. Yet h