Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/29

 Rh me her letters are hardly inferior to Mrs. Montagu's."

Those were the days to live in, and sensible people made haste to be born in time. The close of the eighteenth century saw quiet country families tearing the freshly published "Mysteries of Udolpho" into a dozen parts, because no one could wait his turn to read the book. All England held its breath while Emily explored the haunted chambers of her prison-house. The beginning of the nineteenth century found Mrs. Opie enthroned as a peerless novel-writer, and the "Edinburgh Review" praising "Adeline Mowbray, or Mother and Daughter," as the most pathetic story in the English language. Indeed, one sensitive gentleman wrote to its authoress that he had lain awake all night, bathed in tears, after reading it. About this time, too, we begin to hear "the mellow tones of Felicia Hemans," whom Christopher North reverently admired; and who, we are assured, found her way to all hearts that were open to "the holy sympathies of religion and virtue." Murray's heart was so open that he paid two hundred guineas for the "Vespers