At this period, by the command of my father, I was sent to boarding school.--Ah! never shall I forget the contrast I experienced. I was an alien and a stranger;--no one loved, caressed, nor cared for me;--my actions were all constrained;--I was obliged to sit poring over needle work, and forbidden to prate;--my body was tortured into forms, my mind coerced, and talks imposed upon me, grammar and French, mere words, that conveyed to me no ideas. I loved my guardians with passion--my tastes were all passions--they tore themselves from my embraces with difficulty. I sat down, after their departure, and wept--bitter tears--sobbed convulsively--my griefs were unheeded, and my sensibility ridiculed--I neither gave nor received pleasure. After the rude stare of curiosity, ever wounding to my feelings, was gratified, I was left to sob alone. At length, one young lady, with a fair face and a gentle demeanour, came and seated herself beside me. She spoke, in a soft voice, words of sympathy--my desolate heart fluttered at the sound. I looked at her--her features were mild and sweet; I dried my tears, and determined that she should be my friend.--My spirits became calmer, and for a short time I indulged in this relief; but, on enquiry, I found my fair companion had already a selected favourite, and that their amity was the admiration of the school.--Proud, jealous, romantic--I could not submit to be the second in her esteem--I shunned her, and returned her caresses with coldness. The only mitigation I now felt to the anguish that had seized my spirits, was in the hours of business. I was soon distinguished for attention and capacity; but my governness being with-held, by an infirm constitution, from the duties of her office, I was consigned, with my companions, to ignorant, splenetic, teachers, who encouraged not my emulation, and who sported with the acuteness of my sensations. In the intervals from school hours I fought and procured books.--These were often wantonly taken from me, as a punishment for the most trivial offence; and, when my indignant spirit broke out into murmurs and remonstrance, I was constrained to learn, by way of penance, chapters in the Proverbs of Solomon, or verses from the French testament. To revenge myself, I satirized my tyrants in doggrel rhymes: my writing master also came in for a share of this little malice; and my productions, wretched enough, were handed round the school with infinite applause. Sunk in sullen melancholy, in the hours of play I crept into corners, and disdained to be amused;--home appeared to me to be the Eden from which I was driven, and there my heart and thoughts incessantly recurred.