But limits were now placed to Mrs. Elizabeth's romance. The danger of Ethel was a frightful reality that awoke every natural feeling. Ethel, the representative of her brother, the last of their nearly extinct race, the sole relation she possessed, the only creature whom she could entirely love, was dear to her beyond expression; and the dread of losing her gave activity to her slothful resolves. Having seldom, during the whole course of her life, been called upon to put any plan or wish of her's into actual execution, what another would have immediately and easily done, was an event to call forth all her energies, and to require all her courage; luckily she possessed sufficient to meet the present exigency. She wrote up to London to her single correspondent there, her brother's solicitor. A house was taken, and the first warm days of spring found the ladies established in the metropolis. A physician had been called in, and he pronounced the mind only to be sick. "Amuse her," he said, "occupy her--prevent her from dwelling on those thoughts which have preyed upon her health; let her see new faces, new places, every thing new--and youth, and a good constitution, will do the rest." There seemed so much truth in this advice, that all dangerous symptoms disappeared from the moment of Ethel's leaving Essex. Her strength returned--her face resumed its former loveliness; and aunt Bessy, overjoyed at the change, occupied herself earnestly in discovering amusements for her niece in the numerous, wide-spread, and very busy congregation of human beings, which forms the western portion of London. CHAPTER XVIII You are now In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow, At once is deaf and loud. SHELLEY. There is no uninhabited desart so dreary as the peopled streets of London, to those who have no ties with its inhabitants, nor any pursuits in common with its busy crowds. A drop of water in the ocean is no symbol of the situation of an isolated individual thrown upon the stream of metropolitan life; that amalgamates with its kindred element; but the solitary being finds no pole of attraction to cause a union with its fellows, and bastilled by the laws of society, it is condemned to incommunicative solitude.