Page:Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885).djvu/77

Rh with herself once the passing excitement was over. From Dublin she wrote to Everina giving her a description of a masked ball to which she had gone, and of which she had evidently been a conspicuous feature:—

Unfortunately, the rest of the letter is lost.

In the midst of her duties and dissipations she managed to find some little time for more solid pleasures and more congenial work. In her letters she speaks of nothing with so much enthusiasm as of Rousseau, whose Emile she read while she was in Dublin. She wrote to Everina on the 24th of March:

I believe I told you before that as a nation I do not admire the Irish; and as to the great world and its frivolous ceremonies, I cannot away with them; they fatigue me. I thank Heaven I was not so unfortunate as to be born a lady of quality. I am now reading Rousseau's Emile, and love his paradoxes. He chooses a common