 capital of Scotland afforded worthy of observation; with them she visited the ruinous chapel and magnificently mournful apartments of Holyrood House, and gave a sigh to the fate of the lovely, luckless Mary, who was almost its last resident sovereign. Then parting with her newly acquired friends with mutual regret, she proceeded on her road to England, nothing particular occurring on the way for some time except the slow but evident amendment of Mrs. Elphinstone's spirits, and the symptoms of encreased attachment in Montague Thorold; who, if he loved her before with an attachment fatal to his peace and subversive of his prospects, now seemed to idolize her with an ardour bordering

on phrenzy. In despite of the resolutions she had avowed to him, in despite of those he had himself formed, this ardent and invincible passion was visible in every thing he said and did. He seemed to have forgotten that he had any other business in the world than to serve her, to listen to the enchantment of her voice, to watch every change of her countenance. His whole being was absorbed in that one sentiment; and though he had promised not to consider the advantages, which his own wild Quixotism, aided by accident, had thus obtained for him, as making the least alteration in the decided preference of Celestina for another, he insensibly forgot, at least at times, her unalterable affection for Willoughby; and seeing, notwithstanding all her attempts to conceal it, that she pitied him, that she was not insensible of his attempts to please her nor blind to his powers of pleasing, he cherished, in defiance of reason and conviction (from which he fled as much as possible) the extravagant

hope that the barrier, whatever it was, between her and Willoughby would be found invincible, and that the time, though it might yet be remote, would at length arrive when he should himself be allowed to aspire to her favour.
The human mind, however strong, yields too easily to these illusions, whence at least it enjoys the soft consolations of hope, and sees rays of light, which, though imaginary, perhaps are all we often have to carry us on with courage over the rugged way, too thickly sown with real, or, missing them, with imaginary and self-created evils.
It is therefore little to be wondered at, if Montague Thorold, so sanguine in temperament, of so little experience in life, (for he was yet hardly twenty two) and so much in love, should thus eagerly feed himself with hopes of its ultimate success, and be wilfully deaf to every argument which
