Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1820 edition. Excerpt:... piety. I will not dwell on a scene so melancholy. How I afflict your tender heart, my good Miss Byron! Do you think, Lucy, I did not weep? Indeed I did--Poor young lady!--But my mind was fitted for the indulging of scenes so melancholy. Pray, Sir, proceed, said I: what a heart must that be, which bleeds not for such a distress! Pray, Sir, proceed. Be it Dr. Bartlett's task to give you further proticulars. I will be briefer--I will not indulge my own grief. All that medicine could do, was tried: but her confessor, who, however, is an honest, a worthy man, kept up her fears and terrors. He saw the favour her tutor was in with the whole family: he knew that the younger brother had declared for rewarding him in a very high manner: he had more than once put this favoured man upon an avowal of his principles; and, betwixt her piety and her gratitude, had raised such a conflict in her mind, as her tender nature could not bear. At Florence lives a family of high rank and honour, the ladies of which have with them a friend noted for the excellency of her heart, and her genius: and who, having been robbed of her fortune early in life, by an uncle, to whose care she was committed by her dying father, was received both as a companion and a blessing, by the ladies of the family she has now for many years lived with. She is an English woman and a Protestant; but so very discreet, that her being so, though at first they hoped to proselyte her, gives them not a less value for her; and yet they are all zealous Roman-Catholics. These two ladies, and this their companion, were visiting one day at the Marchese della Poretta's; and there the distressed mother told them the mournful tale: the ladies, who think nothing that is within the compass of human...