If she did not feel her danger, she prepared it. The course of reading which her ladyship followed was the certain preparation for her subsequent conduct. She tells us that she could not endure “_the common-place of morality, but metaphysics promised her some relief_.” In these days a heroine need not be amoralist, but she must be a metaphysician. She must “_wander in the not inelegant labyrinth_;” and if in the midst of it she comes unawares upon the monster vice, she must not start, though she have no clue to secure her retreat. From metaphysics Lady Olivia went on to German novels. “_For her largest portions of bliss, for those rapt moments, which consigned vulgar realities to oblivion_,” she owns herself indebted to those writers, who promise an ideal world of pleasure, which, like the _mirage_ in the desert, bewilders the feverish imagination. I always suspected the imagination of these _women of feeling_ to be more susceptible than their hearts. They want excitation for their morbid sensibility, and they care not at what expense it is procured. If they could make all the pleasures of life into one cordial, they would swallow it at a draught in a fit of sentimental spleen. The mental intemperance that they indulge in promiscuous novel-reading destroys all vigour and clearness of judgment; every thing dances in the varying medium of their imagination. Sophistry passes for reasoning; nothing appears profound but what is obscure; nothing sublime but what is beyond the reach of mortal comprehension. To their vitiated taste the simple pathos, which o’ersteps not the modesty of nature, appears cold, tame, and insipid; they must have _scènes_ and a _coup de théâtre_; and ranting, and raving, and stabbing, and drowning, and poisoning; for with them there is no love without murder. Love, in their representations, is indeed a distorted, ridiculous, horrid monster, from whom common sense, taste, decency, and nature recoil. But I will be calm.--You say, my dear Leonora, that your judgment has not been blinded by Lady Olivia’s fascinating manners; but that you are strongly influenced in her favour by that candour, with which she has revealed to you all her faults. The value of candour in individuals should be measured by their sensibility to shame. When a woman throws off all restraint, and then desires me to admire her candour, I am astonished only at her assurance. Do not be the dupe of such candour. Lady Olivia avows a criminal passion, yet you say that you have no doubt of her innocence. The persuasion of your unsuspecting heart is no argument: when you give me any proofs in her favour, I shall pay them all due attention. In the mean time I have given you my opinion of those ladies who place themselves in the most perilous situations, and then expect you to believe them safe.