 and might rather be termed the residence of the anchorite, Solitude. In tearful gladness the fair owner threw her arms round my neck, and blest the power which permited us at last to rest here.
From this antique mansion do I date my narrative; and in arranging it, seek only to fill up those hours yet unblest with the presence of him born to fill every future one. Dear Lady Pembroke, I cannot express the divine repose which hushes at last my overworn faculties.—I look back with wonder on all the past griefs, the mortal conflicts, my shattered frame has contended with. So pure, so perfect, is now my grateful tranquillity, that it seems proof even against misfortune itself.—No more shall my beating heart— my burning brain—but why should I revert to such dismal recollections?
Embosomed in the maternal arms of nature; safe in the obscure and solitary

situation of this ivied asylum, here my affrighted soul, like a scared bird, faintly folds up its weary wings; delights to be alone, and joys in mere safety. I think I can never be happy, be grateful enough, and while my heart exhausts itself in enjoyment, I still call on it for ebullitions to which it is unequal. Pride, passion, vanity, all the grosser particles of my nature are at once exhaled, and every pure, every social virtue, unfolds and blossoms to the vernal sun, forerunning even the snow-drop.
Oh! that radiant, glorious luminary! how new to me seems its influence!— Dark have been the films through which I have hitherto viewed it. Pardon, my darling friend, these flights of fancy: how playful does the mind grow when at peace with itself?
Hasten, generous Tracey, hasten to my love, and inform him of our arrival. But is not Tracey already gone? Oh! hasten then, my Essex; quit that busy scene, where virtue incessantly hovers on the verge of a precipice a thousand

ready hands would plunge her over, —partake with me the deep repose of thi solitude—no longer heed Elizabeth herself, not even her power can reach us here. Nature's gigantick phalanx, impassable mountains present their formidable summits in long array, overawing every inferior guard; while in their vivid hollows, happiness reposes on the bosom of her mother, Nature.—Oh! come then, and in
A life exempt from public haunt,
Find tongues in trees, books in the running streams,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

A thunder-bolt falls on my brain! avenging heaven, why does it not wholly split
