an artless outpouring of the secret feelings of a loving, yet pure heart.

This diary will serve to shew you more plainly than all my descriptions could, that lusus naturæ, the heart of a young English woman, which foreigners rarely have an opportunity of studying, and may I, without offending, add?-more rarely have the power of comprehending. He has lent me this diary, so I shall copy it, and send you my transcript. I affected to plead for Lady Annandale, tried to extenuate some passages in this naïf record of her feelings, and to soften others: but what could extenuate, in her vain husband's eyes, that crime of deepest, darkest die, the depreciation of himself, so innocently expressed? Her love for another I do believe he could pardon; but her want of admiration for the person he most admires upon earth, self, he never can forgive.

DIARY OF LADY ANNANDALE.

YES! Mary Delaward is right. No woman ever should permit the daily visits of any man. O God! why was the bandage not sooner torn from my eyes? Now, alas! it is too late; the arrow has entered into my soul, never to leave it but with life. This deep consciousness of an unhallowed passion will destroy me; and I feel as if all who behold me could read it in characters of shame on my brow. How am I fallen! To whom can I pour out the miseries of my oppressed heart? Not to Mary Delaward's chaste ear can the ravings of an illicit passion be disclosed: she would shrink from me in horror. To Caroline the confession of my error would only excite some heartless jest on the commonness of my misfortune. She would confound me with the crowd of

women whose guilt is not limited to the heart; and II that was so proud and so pitiless for their crimes, have lived to experience the dreadful consciousness of a guilty passion,—that first step in the rapid descent to vice and ruin.

I knew not that I loved him until the sentiment became rooted in my soul, and identified with my life. While first listening to thoughts that seemed the voice of my own, I dreamt not that danger awaited me.

"Each thought of mine an echo found in his;
Our minds were like two mirrors, placed on walls,
Fronting each other, and reflecting back

The self-same objects such is sympathy."

I fancied, fool that I was, that I only felt for Lord Nottingham the same admiration and deference that I entertained for Lord Delaward. A growing distaste towards the weak man to whom I so madly gave myself, ought to have warned me of the state of my heart, by

shewing that it was the contrast presented to his mediocrity by the noble qualities of Nottingham which had increased my indifference towards him into positive dislike.

But no, I was infatuated-madly, blindly, infatuated, and shut my eyes to the precipice on the edge of which I stood. To count the hours of his absence, to listen for his step, to tremble at his approach, to forget all but him during his presence, and to dread the moment of his departure - this has been my life for months. Mary Delaward must have observed something in my letters, or heard some evil remark, to have induced her to dwell on the danger of male friendships.

That letter first opened my eyes to my danger; yet I had not courage to break off the daily habit of seeing him. Even now that Caroline has spoken more plainly, and I can no longer doubt the fatal truth that he is dear

-oh, how unutterably dear!—to me, yet can I not resolve to separate from him for ever; though that is the only conduct which prudence, duty, and virtue, dictate to me to pursue. How often does the thought intrude, that, when I first saw him on whom my soul dotes, I was still free! and I might have broken off the engagement my inexperience led me to form with a man whom, even then, I felt that I did not, could not love. Why did I not refuse to ratify that fatal compact? I might have been his in the sight of God and man; and blessed in, instead of murmuring at, my destiny. It was Caroline's counsel that

lured me into this detested marriage — would that the grave had received me before I had formed it!

It is a relief to unburden my heart by committing its overflowings to paper, now that I dare no longer open its secret feelings to