f confinement, till she
could advance on surer ground.

Maria was not permitted to walk in the garden; but sometimes, from her
window, she turned her eyes from the gloomy walls, in which she pined
life away, on the poor wretches who strayed along the walks, and
contemplated the most terrific of ruins--that of a human soul. What is
the view of the fallen column, the mouldering arch, of the most exquisite
workmanship, when compared with this living memento of the fragility, the
instability, of reason, and the wild luxuriancy of noxious passions?
Enthusiasm turned adrift, like some rich stream overflowing its banks,
rushes forward with destructive velocity, inspiring a sublime
concentration of thought. Thus thought Maria--These are the ravages over
which humanity must ever mournfully ponder, with a degree of anguish not
excited by crumbling marble, or cankering brass, unfaithful to the trust
of monumental fame. It is not over the decaying productions of the mind,
embodied with the happiest art, we grieve most bitterly. The view of what
has been done by man, produces a melancholy, yet aggrandizing, sense of
what remains to be achieved by human intellect; but a mental convulsion,
which, like the devastation of an earthquake, throws all the elements of
thought and imagination into confusion, makes contemplation giddy, and
we fearfully ask on what ground we ourselves stand.

Melancholy and imbecility marked the features of the wretches allowed to
breathe at large; for the frantic, those who in a strong imagination had
lost a sense of woe, were closely confined. The playful tricks and
mischievous devices of their disturbed fancy, that suddenly broke out,
could not be guarded against, when they were permitted to enjoy any
portion of freedom; for, so active was their imagination, that every new
object which accidentally struck their senses, awoke to phrenzy their
restless passions; as Maria learned from the burden of their incessant
ravings.

Sometimes, with a strict injunction of silence, Jemima would allow
Maria, at the close of evening, to stray along the narrow avenues that
separated the dungeon-like apartments, leaning on her arm. What a change
of scene! Maria wished to pass the threshold of her prison, yet, when by
chance she met the eye of rage glaring on her, yet unfaithful to its
office, she shrunk back with more horror and affright, than if she had
stumbled over a mangled corpse. Her busy fancy pictured the misery of