fast, and was
not anxious for a girl's manuscript; but his wife persuaded him to promise
to look it over; and, elated with success, Sydney ran back, forgetting to
leave any address, and never heard of her first venture till, taking up a
book in a friend's parlor, it proved to be her own. It had a good sale,
and was translated into German, with a biographical notice which stated
that the young author had strangled herself with an embroidered
handkerchief in an agony of despair and unrequited love. _The Sorrows of
Werther_ was her model, but with a deal of stuff and sentimentality there
was the promise of better things. "In all her early works her characters
indulge in wonderful digressions, historical, astronomical and
metaphysical, in the midst of terrible emergencies where danger, despair
and unspeakable catastrophes are imminent and impending. No matter what
laceration of their finest feelings they may be suffering, they always
have their learning at command, and never fail to make quotations from
favorite authors appropriate to the occasion."

_The Novice of St. Dominick_ was Miss Owenson's second novel, and she went
alone to London to make arrangements for its publication. In those days a
journey from Ireland to that great city was no small undertaking, and when
the coach drove into the yard of the Swan with Two Necks the enterprising
young lady was utterly exhausted, and, seating herself on her little trunk
in the inn-yard, fell fast asleep. But, as usual, she found friends, and
good luck was on her side. The novel was cut down from six volumes to
four, and with her first literary earnings, after assisting her father,
she bought an Irish harp and a black mode cloak, being always devoted to
music and dress. At this time her strongest ambition was to be every inch
a woman. She gave up serious studies, to which she had applied herself,
and cultivated even music as a mere accomplishment, fearful lest she
should be considered a pedant or an artiste.

Next came _The Wild Irish Girl_, her first national story, which gave her
more than a national fame, and three hundred pounds from her fascinated
publisher. It contains much curious information about the antiquities and
social condition of Ireland, and a passionate pleading against the wrongs
of its people. It made the piquant little governess all the rage in
fashionable society, and until her marriage she was known by the name of
her heroine, Glorvina. As a story the book