of a young woman more interesting than is in the power of the gayest, richest, and most laboured ornaments. This certainly does not proceed from any thing remarkably becoming in black and white flannel. The Lady Abbess and the elderly nuns made no more impression in their vestal robes, than those stale, forlorn dames, whom you may see displaying their family jewels and shrivelled countenances every night at Ranelagh or in the side-boxes. The interest you take in a beautiful woman is heightened on seeing her in the dress of a nun, by the opposition which you imagine exists between the life to which her rash vows have condemned her, and that to which her own unbiassed inclination would have led her. You are moved with pity, which you know is a-kin to love, on seeing a young blooming creature doomed to retirement and self-denial, who was formed by nature for society and enjoyment. If we may credit the ancient poets, those young women who are confined to a cloister life on any part of this coast, are more to be pitied than they would be under the same restraint elsewhere. They tell us, the very air in this part of Italy is repugnant to that kind of constitution, and that turn of mind, of which it would be peculiarly happy for nuns to be possessed. Propertius intreats his Cynthia not to remain too long on a shore which he seems to think dangerous to the chastest maiden. Tu modo quamprimum corruptas desere Baias— ... Littora quæ fuerant castis inimica puellis. Martial asserts, that a woman who came hither as chaste as Penelope, if she remained any time, would depart as licentious and depraved as Helen, Penelope venit, abit Helene. I have certainly met with ladies, after they had resided some time at Naples, who, in point of character and constitution, were thought to have a much stronger resemblance to Helen than to Penelope; but as I have no great faith in the sudden operation of physical causes in matters of this kind, I never doubted of those ladies having carried the same disposition to Naples that they brought from it. Though there are not wanting those who affirm, that the influence of this seducing climate is evident _now_ in as strong a degree as it is described to have been anciently; that it pervades people of all ranks and conditions, and that in the convents themselves; Even there where frozen chastity retires, Love finds an altar for forbidden fires.