which began to oppress her. Her years of toil had left her sad and lonely: she needed to rest for a little while in human affection. She could not even write to her own satisfaction; for her morbid fatigue led her to reproduce Fuseli's cynicism, and she dared not trust herself. She entered the best circles of Parisian society, and became intimate with the leaders of the Revolution. In four months after her arrival occurred the most untoward event of her life,--her marriage to a worthless American named Gilbert Imlay; a name rescued from oblivion only by his temporary attachment to her. I say her _marriage_, for Imlay offered himself in marriage, and was accepted as a husband; but, taking advantage of a custom not unusual at Paris in those disorderly times, Mary refused to consummate the legal forms. Mr. Imlay had no property. Mary had a large family to support; and she neither wished to become answerable for his debts, nor to make him responsible for hers. She took the name of Imlay; and, expecting to follow her brother to America, she obtained from our ambassador at Paris a certificate of American citizenship, to serve as a temporary protection. In order that you may comprehend the precise significance which this step had in that place and at that time, let me remind you, that Helen Maria Williams, her personal friend, and the ward of Dr. Rees of cyclopedic memory, was married in the same way to a Mr. Edwards, then in Paris. She was a well-known writer of that period; and we are still indebted to her for some of the best hymns sung in our churches,--among them, that well-known hymn, beginning, "While thee I seek, protecting Power." But her husband was worthy of the trust she had reposed in him, and she never turned a ready pen against the follies of society: so _her_ character has never stood in the public stocks. It will be impossible to consider Mary's attachment to Imlay in any degree rational, if we look only at her _character_, and keep out of sight her peculiar personal _history_.