k, with a lighted
candle in it, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, four of them, I suppose, for a
penny.

Near that, on the same shelf, was an old looking-glass, cracked through
the middle, breaking out into a thousand points; the crack given it,
perhaps, in a rage, by some poor creature, to whom it gave the
representation of his heart's woes in his face.

The chimney had two half-tiles in it on one side, and one whole one on
the other; which showed it had been in better plight; but now the very
mortar had followed the rest of the tiles in every other place, and left
the bricks bare.

An old half-barred stove grate was in the chimney; and in that a large
stone-bottle without a neck, filled with baleful yew, as an evergreen,
withered southern-wood, dead sweet-briar, and sprigs of rue in flower.

To finish the shocking description, in a dark nook stood an old
broken-bottomed cane couch, without a squab, or coverlid, sunk at one
corner, and unmortised by the failing of one of its worm-eater legs,
which lay in two pieces under the wretched piece of furniture it could
no longer support.

And this, thou horrid Lovelace, was the bed-chamber of the divine
Clarissa!!!

I had leisure to cast my eye on these things: for, going up softly, the
poor lady turned not about at our entrance; nor, till I spoke, moved her
head.

She was kneeling in a corner of the room, near the dismal window, against
the table, on an old bolster (as it seemed to be) of the cane couch,
half-covered with her handkerchief; her back to the door; which was only
shut to, [no need of fastenings;] her arms crossed upon the table, the
fore-finger of her right-hand in her Bible. She had perhaps been reading
in it, and could read no longer. Paper, pens, ink, lay by her book on
the table. Her dress was white damask, exceeding neat; but her stays
seemed not tight-laced. I was told afterwards, that her laces had been
cut, when she fainted away at her entrance into this cursed place; and
she had not been solicitous enough about her dress to send for others.
Her head-dress was a little discomposed; her charming hair, in natural
ringlets, as you have heretofore described it, but a little tangled, as
if not lately combed, irregularly shading one side of the loveliest neck
in the world; as her disordered rumpled handkerchief did the other. Her
face [O how altered from what I had seen it! yet lovely in spite of all
her griefs and sufferings!] was reclined, when we ente