lly implored, only to be
immediately forgotten, or viewed with indifference or abhorrence!

The heart-rending sigh of melancholy sunk into her soul; and when she
retired to rest, the petrified figures she had encountered, the only
human forms she was doomed to observe, haunting her dreams with tales of
mysterious wrongs, made her wish to sleep to dream no more.

Day after day rolled away, and tedious as the present moment appeared,
they passed in such an unvaried tenor, Maria was surprised to find that
she had already been six weeks buried alive, and yet had such faint
hopes of effecting her enlargement. She was, earnestly as she had sought
for employment, now angry with herself for having been amused by writing
her narrative; and grieved to think that she had for an instant thought
of any thing, but contriving to escape.

Jemima had evidently pleasure in her society: still, though she often
left her with a glow of kindness, she returned with the same chilling
air; and, when her heart appeared for a moment to open, some suggestion
of reason forcibly closed it, before she could give utterance to the
confidence Maria's conversation inspired.

Discouraged by these changes, Maria relapsed into despondency, when she
was cheered by the alacrity with which Jemima brought her a fresh parcel
of books; assuring her, that she had taken some pains to obtain them
from one of the keepers, who attended a gentleman confined in the
opposite corner of the gallery.

Maria took up the books with emotion. "They come," said she, "perhaps,
from a wretch condemned, like me, to reason on the nature of madness,
by having wrecked minds continually under his eye; and almost to wish
himself--as I do--mad, to escape from the contemplation of it." Her
heart throbbed with sympathetic alarm; and she turned over the leaves
with awe, as if they had become sacred from passing through the hands of
an unfortunate being, oppressed by a similar fate.

Dryden's Fables, Milton's Paradise Lost, with several modern
productions, composed the collection. It was a mine of treasure. Some
marginal notes, in Dryden's Fables, caught her attention: they were
written with force and taste; and, in one of the modern pamphlets, there
was a fragment left, containing various observations on the present
state of society and government, with a comparative view of the politics
of Europe and America. These remarks were written with a degree of
generous warmth, when alluding