er's illness, and
during the subsequent convalescence, she had had leisure to ruminate
upon purposes of this sort. Her expanded mind led her to seek something
more arduous than the mere removal of personal vexations; and the
sensibility of her heart would not suffer her to rest in solitary
gratifications. The derangement of her father's affairs daily became
more and more glaring; and a small independent provision made for
herself and her sisters, appears to have been sacrificed in the wreck.
For ten years, from 1782 to 1792, she may be said to have been, in a
great degree, the victim of a desire to promote the benefit of others.
She did not foresee the severe disappointment with which an exclusive
purpose of this sort is pregnant; she was inexperienced enough to lay a
stress upon the consequent gratitude of those she benefited; and she did
not sufficiently consider that, in proportion as we involve ourselves in
the interests and society of others, we acquire a more exquisite sense
of their defects, and are tormented with their untractableness and
folly.

The project upon which she now determined, was no other than that of a
day-school, to be superintended by Fanny Blood, herself, and her two
sisters.

They accordingly opened one in the year 1783, at the village of
Islington; but in the course of a few months removed it to Newington
Green. Here Mary formed some acquaintances who influenced the future
events of her life. The first of these in her own estimation, was Dr.
Richard Price, well known for his political and mathematical
calculations, and universally esteemed by those who knew him, for the
simplicity of his manners, and the ardour of his benevolence. The regard
conceived by these two persons for each other, was mutual, and partook
of a spirit of the purest attachment. Mary had been bred in the
principles of the church of England, but her esteem for this venerable
preacher led her occasionally to attend upon his public instructions.
Her religion was, in reality, little allied to any system of forms; and,
as she has often told me, was founded rather in taste, than in the
niceties of polemical discussion. Her mind constitutionally attached
itself to the sublime and the amiable. She found an inexpressible
delight in the beauties of nature, and in the splendid reveries of the
imagination. But nature itself, she thought, would be no better than a
vast blank, if the mind of the observer did not supply it with an
anim