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256 awaken sympathy in a breast so callous? With her conjugal feelings thus highly wrought, and by her afflicting situation incapacitated from an impartial and calm estimate of things, she could find no extenuative plea for a chairacter and conduct so opposite to her own.

Driven, however, to the last extremity, she weighed again the subject, no longer hesitated, but wrote the dictates of her aching heart. With such a scene before her, as she was then called upon to represent, forcible was the colouring, emphatic and powerful the language which flowed from her pen. Several copies were written, but none pleased her. Notwithstanding the moderation she wished to throw into her style, some slight flashes of invective ran through it. The child of nature, she knew, not how to flatter or use dissimulation; such as were her heart and feelings, such they appeared. Amidst the discouraging calamities around her, a noble independence reigned. Truth, piety, and justice inspiring her sentiments and animating her diction, though she had endeavoured in some degree to soften the asperity of reproach, yet she was conscious she had not completely succeeded.

Whatever might be the result of her intended appeal, it was fortunate for her purpose that Robert had either never suspected, or else had