Memoirs of Emma Courtney

more unequal; even his sentiments, and principles, at times, appeared to me equivocal, and his cha

pe inspired me, that indifference could not have produced the irritations, the inequalities, that thus harrassed me. I thought, I observed a conflict in his mind; his fits of absence, and reflection, were unusual, deep, and frequent: I watched the

to encourage-I revolved them in my mind, examined them in every point of view, weighed their advantages and disadvantages, in a moral, in a prudential, scale.-Threatening evils appeared on all sides-I endeavoured, at once, to

ounded on any other principle, involve in themselves a contradiction, and must be erroneous. Man does right, when pursuing interest and pleasure-it argues no depravity-this is the fable of superstition: he ought to only be careful, that, in seeking his own good, he does not render it incompatible with the good of others-that he does not consider himself as standing alone in the universe. The infraction of established rules may, it is

red state; but, in the meanwhile, the bloom of youth is fading, and the vigour of life running to waste.-Should I, at length, awake from a delusive vision, it would be only to find myself a comfortless, solitary, shivering, wanderer, in the d

life, the education both of design and accident, have fitted me. If I am now put out, I may, perhaps, do mischief:-the placid stream, forced from its channel, lays waste the meadow. I seem to stand as upon a wide plain, bounded on all sides by the horizon:-among the objects which I perceive within these limits, some are so lofty, my eyes ache t

for a legislator, nor for a reformer, of the world. I have still many female foibles, and shrinking delicacies, that unfit me for rising to arduous heights. Ambition cannot stimulate me, and to accumulate wealth, I am still less fitted. Should I, then, do violence to my heart, and compel it to resign its hopes and expectations, what can preser

ions, of which nature has formed my heart so exquisitely susceptible. My ardent sensibilities incite me to love-to seek to inspire sympathy-to be beloved! My heart obstinately refuses to renounce the man, to whose mind my own seems akin! Fro

ad to act;-I persuaded myself, that I had gone too far to recede, and that there remained for me no alternative:-the next instant, I shrunk, gasping, from my own resolv