in fantastic ways, and with an ostentation that we are apt to mistake for insincerity. When Mrs. Katharine Philips founded her famous Society of Friendship, in the middle of the seventeenth century, she was working earnestly enough for her particular conception of sweetness and light. It is hard not to laugh at these men and women of the world addressing each other solemnly as the "noble Silvander" and the "dazzling Polycrete;" and it is harder still to believe that the fervent devotion of their verses represented in any degree the real sentiments of their hearts. But Orinda, whose indefatigable exertions held the society together, meant every word she said, and credited the rest with similar veracity.
"Lucasia, whose harmonious state
The Spheres and Muses only imitate,"
is for her but a temperate expression of regard; and we find her writing to Mrs. Annie Owens—a most unresponsive young Welshwoman—in language that would be deemed extravagant in a lover:—
"I did not live until this time
Crowned my felicity,
When I could say without a crime,
I am not thine, but thee.
