But it is now time to describe our heroine. As Milton tells us, that Eve was '_more lovely than Pandora_' (an imaginary lady, who never existed but in the brains of poets), so do we declare, and are ready to stake our lives, that our heroine excelled in her form the Timinitilidi, whom no man ever saw; and, in her voice, the music of the spheres, which no man ever heard. Perhaps her face was not perfect; but it was more--it was interesting--it was oval. Her eyes were of the real, original old blue; and her eyelashes of the best silk. You forget the thickness of her lips, in the casket of pearls which they enshrined; and the roses of York and Lancaster were united in her cheek. A nose of the Grecian order surmounted the whole. Such was Hysterica. But alas! misfortunes are often gregarious, like sheep. For one night, when our heroine had repaired to the chapel, intending to drop her customary tear on the tomb of her sainted benefactress, she heard on a sudden, Oh, horrid, horrible, and horridest horror! the distant organ peal a solemn voluntary. While she was preparing, in much terror and astonishment, to accompany it with her voice, four men in masks rushed from among some tombs, and bore her to a carriage, which instantly drove off with the whole party. In vain she sought to soften them by swoons, tears, and a simple little ballad: they sat counting murders, and not minding her. As the blinds of the carriage were closed the whole way, we wave a description of the country which they traversed. Besides, the prospect within the carriage will occupy the reader enough; for in one of the villains, Hysterica discovered--Count Stiletto! She fainted. On the second day, the carriage stopped at an old castle, and she was conveyed into a tapestried apartment, where the delicate creature instantly fell ill of an inverted eyelash, caused by continual weeping. She then drew upon the contemplation of future sorrows, for a supply of that melancholy which her immediate exigencies demanded. CHAPTER III Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd?--SHAKESPEARE. FRESH EMBARRASSMENTS.--AN INSULT FROM A SPECTRE.--GRAND DISCOVERIES.--A SHRIEK.--A TEAR.--A SIGH.--A BLUSH.--A SWOON. It is a remark founded upon the nature of man, and universally credited by the thinking part of the world, that to suffer is an attribute of mortality. Impressed with a due conviction of this important precept, our heroine but smiled as she heard Stiletto lock her door. It was now midnight, and she took up her lamp to examine the chamber. Rusty daggers, mouldering bones, and ragged palls, lay scattered in all the profusion of feudal plenty. Several horrors now made their appearance; but the most uncommon was a winged eyeball that fluttered before her face.