Ah, you have never felt this kind of sickness of heart! My mind, however, is at present painfully active, and the sympathy I feel almost rises to agony. But this is not a subject of complaint; it has afforded me pleasure, and reflected pleasure is all I have to hope for, if a spark of hope be yet alive in my forlorn bosom.

I will try to write with a degree of composure. I wish for us to live together because I want you to acquire an habitual tenderness for my poor girl I cannot bear to think of leaving her alone in the world, or that she should only be protected by your sense of duty. Next to preserving her, my most earnest wish is not to disturb your peace. I have nothing to expect, and little to fear, in life. There are wounds that can never be healed; but they may be allowed to fester in silence without wincing.

When we meet again you shall be convinced that I have more resolution than you give me credit for. I will not torment you. If I am destined always to be disappointed and unhappy, I will conceal the anguish I cannot dissipate; and the tightened cord of life or reason will at last snap, and set me free.

Yes; I shall be happy. This heart is worthy of the bliss its feelings anticipate; and I cannot

even persuade myself, wretched as they have made me, that my principles and sentiments are not founded in nature and truth. But to have done with these subjects.

I have been seriously employed in this way since I came to Tonsberg; yet I never was so much in the air. I walk, I ride on horseback, row, bathe, and even sleep in the fields; my health is consequently improved. The child, Marguerite informs me, is well. I long to be with her.

Write to me immediately. Were I only to think of myself, I could wish you to return to me poor, with the simplicity of character, part of which you seem lately to have lost, that first attached me to you.

Yours most affectionately,

MARY IMLAY.

The Same to the Same.

COPENHAGEN, Sept. 6, 1795.

GRACIOUS God! it is impossible for me to stifle something like resentment when I receive fresh proofs of your indifference. What I have suffered this last year is not to be forgotten! I have not that happy substitute for wisdom, insensibility;

and the lively sympathies which bind me to my fellow-creatures are all of a painful kind. They are the agonies of a broken heart; pleasure and I have shaken hands.

I see here nothing but heaps of ruin, and only converse with people immersed in trade and sensuality.

I am weary of travelling, yet seem to have no home - no resting-place to look to. I am strangely cast off. How often, passing through the rocks, I have thought, "But for this child I would lay my head on one of them and never open my eyes again!" With a heart feelingly alive to all the affections of my nature, I have never met with one softer than the stone that I would fain take for my last pillow. I once thought I had; but it was all a delusion. I meet with families continually, who are bound together by affection or principle; and when I am conscious that I have fulfilled the duties of my station, almost to a forgetfulness of myself, I am ready to demand, in a murmuring tone, of Heaven, "Why am I thus abandoned?"

The Same to the Same.

This letter is written on the night when, driven to madness by Imlay's conduct, Mary Wollstonecraft went out and made the desperate attempt to drown herself in the Thames. The one following this is written soon after her

rescue.

LONDON, November, 1795.

I WRITE you now on my knees, imploring you to send my child and the maid with

to Paris,

Rue

to be consigned to the care of Madame Section de -. Should they be removed, can give their direction.

Let the maid have my clothes without distinction.

Pray pay the cook her wages, and do not mention the confession which I forced from her; a little sooner or later is of no consequence. Nothing but my extreme stupidity could have rendered me blind so long. Yet, whilst you assured me that you had no attachment, I thought we might still live together.

I shall make no comments on your conduct, or any appeal to the world. Let my wrongs sleep with me! Soon, very soon, I shall be at peace. When you receive this my burning head will be cold.

I would encounter a thousand deaths rather

than a night like the last. Your treatment has thrown my mind into a state of chaos; yet I am serene. I go to find comfort, and my only fear is, that my poor body will be insulted by an endeavour to recall my hated existence. But I shall plunge

into the Thames where there is the least chance of my being snatched from the death I seek.

God bless you! May you never know by experience what you have made me endure. Should your sensibility ever awake, remorse will find its way to your heart; and, in the midst of business and sensual pleasure, I shall appear before you, the victim of your deviation from rectitude.

The Same to the Same.

LONDON, November, 1795,
Sunday Morning.

I HAVE only to lament that, when the bitterness of death was past, I was inhumanly brought back to life and misery. But a fixed determination is not to be baffled by disappointment; nor will I allow that to be a frantic attempt which was one of the calmest acts of reason. In this respect I am only accountable to myself. Did I care for what is termed reputation, it is by other circumstances that I should be dishonoured.