et, or perhaps in the
same house. This is the fuel which principally feeds and supplies the
dangerous flame of sentiment. In this correspondence the two friends
encourage each other in the falsest notions imaginable. They represent
romantic love as the great important business of human life, and
describe all the other concerns of it as too low and paltry to merit the
attention of such elevated beings, and fit only to employ the daughters
of the plodding vulgar. In these letters, family affairs are
misrepresented, family secrets divulged, and family misfortunes
aggravated. They are filled with vows of eternal amity, and
protestations of never-ending love. But interjections and quotations are
the principal embellishments of these very sublime epistles. Every
panegyric contained in them is extravagant and hyperbolical, and every
censure exaggerated and excessive. In a favourite, every frailty is
heightened into a perfection, and in a foe degraded into a crime. The
dramatic poets, especially the most tender and romantic, are quoted in
almost every line, and every pompous or pathetic thought is forced to
give up its natural and obvious meaning, and with all the violence of
misapplication, is compelled to suit some circumstance of imaginary woe
of the fair transcriber. Alicia is not too mad for her heroics, nor
Monimia too mild for her soft emotions.

FATHERS _have flinty hearts_ is an expression worth an empire, and is
always used with peculiar emphasis and enthusiasm. For a favourite topic
of these epistles is the groveling spirit and sordid temper of the
parents, who will be sure to find no quarter at the hands of their
daughters, should they presume to be so unreasonable as to direct their
course of reading, interfere in their choice of friends, or interrupt
their very important correspondence. But as these young ladies are
fertile in expedients, and as their genius is never more agreeably
exercised than in finding resources, they are not without their secret
exultation, in case either of the above interesting events should
happen, as they carry with them a certain air of tyranny and persecution
which is very delightful. For a prohibited correspondence is one of the
great incidents of a sentimental life, and a letter clandestinely
received, the supreme felicity of a sentimental lady.

NOTHING can equal the astonishment of these soaring spirits, when their
plain friends or prudent relations presume to remonstrate with the