e history, for Rebecca Rymer and Agnes Primrose are its heroines.

But you, unprejudiced reader, whose liberal observations are not confined
to stations, but who consider all mankind alike deserving your
investigation; who believe that there exists, in some, knowledge without
the advantage of instruction; refinement of sentiment independent of
elegant society; honourable pride of heart without dignity of blood; and
genius destitute of art to render it conspicuous--you will, perhaps,
venture to read on, in hopes that the remainder of this story may deserve
your attention, just as the wild herb of the forest, equally with the
cultivated plant in the garden, claims the attention of the botanist.

Young William saw in young Agnes even more beauty than was beheld by
others; and on those days when he felt no inclination to ride, to shoot,
or to hunt, he would contrive, by some secret device, the means to meet
with her alone, and give her tokens (if not of his love) at least of his
admiration of her beauty, and of the pleasure he enjoyed in her company.

Agnes listened, with a kind of delirious enchantment, to all her elevated
and eloquent admirer uttered; and in return for his praises of her
charms, and his equivocal replies in respect to his designs towards her,
she gave to him her most undisguised thoughts, and her whole enraptured
heart.

This harmless intercourse (as she believed it) had not lasted many weeks
before she loved him: she even confessed she did, every time that any
unwonted mark of attention from him struck with unexpected force her
infatuated senses.

It has been said by a celebrated writer, upon the affection subsisting
between the two sexes, "that there are many persons who, if they had
never heard of the passion of love, would never have felt it." Might it
not with equal truth be added, that there are many more, who, having
heard of it, and believing most firmly that they feel it, are
nevertheless mistaken? Neither of these cases was the lot of Agnes. She
experienced the sentiment before she ever heard it named in the sense
with which it had possessed her--joined with numerous other sentiments;
for genuine love, however rated as the chief passion of the human heart,
is but a poor dependent, a retainer upon other passions; admiration,
gratitude, respect, esteem, pride in the object. Divest the boasted
sensation of these, and it is not more than the impression of a twelve-
month, by courtesy, or vul