Maigre, moi fixe ici mes pas, Et tu sais que pour aller a Corinth, Le désir seul ne suffit pas.” Adieu, H. M. LETTER XIII. TO J. D. ESQ., M. P. The conduct of this girl is inexplicable. Since the unfortunate picture scene three days back, she has excused herself twice from the drawing desk; and to-day appeared at it with the priest by her side. Her playful familiarity is vanished, and a chill reserve, uncongenial to the native ardour of her manner has succeeded. Surely she cannot be so vain, so weak, as to mistake my attentions to her as a young and lovely woman, my admiration of her talents, and my surprise at the originality of her character, for a serious passion. And supposing me to be a wanderer and a hireling, affect to reprove my temerity by haughtiness and disdain. Would you credit it! by Heavens, I am sometimes weak enough to be on the very point of telling her who and what I am, when she plays off her little airs of Milesian pride and female superciliousness. You perceive, therefore, by the conduct of this little Irish recluse, that on the subject of love and vanity, woman is everywhere, and in all situations the same. For what coquette reared in the purlieus of St. James’s, could be more a _portée_ to those effects which denote the passion, or more apt to suspect she had awakened it into existence, than this inexperienced, unsophisticated being! who I suppose never spoke to ten men in her life, save the superanuated inhabitants of her paternal ruins. Perhaps, however, she only means to check the growing familiarity of my manner, and to teach me the disparity of rank which exists between us; for, with all her native strength of mind, the influence of invariable example and precept has been too strong for her, and she has unconsciously imbibed many of her father’s prejudices respecting antiquity of descent and nobility of birth. She will frequently say, “O! such a one is a true Milesian!”--or, “he is a descendant of the _English_ Irish;” or, “they are new people--we hear nothing of them till the wars of Cromwell,” and so on. Yet at other times, when reason lords it over prejudice, she will laugh at that weakness in others, she sometimes betrays in herself. The other day, as we stood chatting at a window together, pointing to an elderly man who passed by, she said, “there goes a poor Connaught gentleman, who would rather starve than work--he is a _follower_ of the family and has been just entertaining my father with an account of our ancient splendour. We have too many instances of this species of _mania_ among us.