Her temper was mild, and by no means easily ruffled; her disposition was gentle, humane, amiable, and cheerful, though seldom or never breaking out into extravagant gaiety. Like all young ladies of her age, who have much unemployed time on their hands, and I believe the same remark will apply to young men similarly situated, she had experienced a void, a want of something in the heart, that she felt acutely enough, but could neither describe nor account for; that peculiar feeling that certainly is not love, but a symptom of the wish to love and be beloved; it is that state of the heart when the affections go forth, like Noah's dove, and finding no object on which to repose, return weary and dejected to their lonely prison. It is an old adage, that "when the devil finds a man idle, he sets him to work;" when love finds a heart unoccupied, he soon finds it a tenant, for it always has been, is now, and always will be true, that "Love is a fire that burns and sparkles, In men as nat'rally as in charcoals." Isabella, almost without knowing it, and without the faintest suspicion of the real state of the case, gradually neglected and ceased to take pleasure in her usual occupations; her books, her music, her needle, and her flowers, all seemed to be equally tiresome and unpleasant. While in this unhappy state of ennui and loneliness of feeling, peculiar to the youthful days, or some portion of them, of both sexes, when the mind, like Hudibras' sword, "Eats into itself, for lack Of somebody to hew and hack," she was thrown into unspeakable grief and consternation, by her uncle one day proposing to her to receive and encourage the addresses of Don Gregorio, as her future husband. To her passionate tears and entreaties to be spared such a dreadful calamity, that she declared was infinitely worse than death, the old Don replied, that it was natural for a girl to be frightened at the idea of leaving a comfortable home, to become the mistress of a family; that he only wished to provide for her, and see her well settled in life, that the proposed husband was handsome, rich, and connected by blood with the viceroy; and also urged many other reasons "too numerous to mention." To all which, the weeping and agonized girl replied, as soon as her uncle was out of breath, and she had an opportunity of speaking, "But, my dear uncle, you know his character, and why, oh! why, will you sacrifice me, whom you have always treated with so much affection and kindness, to one whom every one knows to be a fool and a coward?"