savoured as he thought of bigotry and prudish reserve, he tore the veil at once from her eyes, and opened hastily her wondering mind to a world before unknown. He foresaw not the peril to which he exposed her:—he heeded not the rapid progress of her thoughts—the boundless views of an over-heated imagination. At first she shrunk with pain and horror, from every feeling which to her mind appeared less chaste, less pure, than those to which she had long been accustomed; but when her principles, or rather her prejudices, yielded to the power of love, she broke from a restraint too rigid, into a liberty the most dangerous from its novelty, its wildness and its uncertainty.
The monastic severity which she had imposed upon herself, from exaggerated sentiments of piety and devotion, gave way with the rest of her former maxims—She knew not where to pause, or rest; her eyes were dazzled, her understand-
