The small pittance bequeathed to me was insufficient to preserve me
from dependence.--_Dependence!_--I repeated to myself, and I felt my
heart die within me. I revolved in my mind various plans for my future
establishment.--I might, perhaps, be allowed to officiate, as an
assistant, in the school where I had been placed in my childhood, with
the mistress of which I still kept up an occasional correspondence; but
this was a species of servitude, and my mind panted for freedom, for
social intercourse, for scenes in motion, where the active curiosity of
my temper might find a scope wherein to range and speculate. What could
the interest of my little fortune afford? It would neither enable me
to live alone, nor even to board in a family of any respectability. My
beloved aunt was no more; her children were about to be dispersed, and
to form various connections.
Cruel prejudices!--I exclaimed--hapless woman! Why was I not educated
for commerce, for a profession, for labour? Why have I been rendered
feeble and delicate by bodily constraint, and fastidious by artificial
refinement? Why are we bound, by the habits of society, as with an
adamantine chain? Why do we suffer ourselves to be confined within a
magic circle, without daring, by a magnanimous effort, to dissolve the
barbarous spell?
A child in the drama of the world, I knew not which way to turn, nor on
what to determine. I wrote to Mr Morton, to enquire on what terms I was
to be received by his family. If merely as a visitor for a few weeks,
till I had time to digest my plans, I should meet, with pleasure, a
gentleman whose character I had been taught to respect; but I should not
consider myself as subject to controul. I ought, perhaps, to have been
satisfied with Mr Morton's answer to my interrogatories.
He wished to embrace the daughter of his brother, his family would be
happy to render Morton Park agreeable to her, as long as she should
think proper to favour them by making it her residence. The young
ladies expected both pleasure and improvement from the society of
their accomplished kinswoman, &c.
I believe I was unreasonable, the style of this letter was civil, nay
kind, and yet it appeared, to me, to want the vivifying principle--what
shall I say?--dictated merely by the head, it reached not the heart.
The trials of my mind, I foreboded, were about to commence, I shrunk
from the world I had been so willing to enter, for the rude storms of
which I had been little fitted by the fostering tenderness of my early
guardians. Those ardent feelings and lively expectations, with all the
glowing landscapes which my mind had sketched of the varied pleasures
of society, while in a measure secluded from its enjoyments, gradually
melted into one deep, undistinguished shade. That sanguine ardour of
temper, which had hitherto appeared the predominant feature of my
character, now gave place to despondency. I wept, I suffered my tears
to flow unrestrained: the solemnity of the late events had seized my
spirits, and the approaching change filled me with solicitude. I
wandered over the scenes of my past pleasures, and recalled to my
remembrance, with a sad and tender luxury, a thousand little incidents,
that derived all their importance from the impossibility of their
renewal. I gazed on every object, _for the last time_--What is there in
these words that awakens our fanaticisms? I could have done homage to
these inanimate, and, till now, uninteresting objects; merely because I
should _see them no more_.
How fantastic and how capricious are these sentiments! Ought I, or
ought I not, to blush while I acknowledge them? My young friends, also,
from whom I was about to separate myself!--how various might be our
destinies, and how unconscious were we of the future! Happy ignorance,
that by bringing the evils of life in succession, gradually inures us to
their endurance.
'Had I beheld the sum of ills, which one
By one, I have endured--my heart had broke.'