_Laval_ seems to entertain no less prejudice against this country than his master, he has therefore begged leave of absence until my father comes over. Pray have the goodness to send me by him a box of Italian crayons, and a good thermometer; for I must have something to relieve the _tedium vitae_ of my exiled days; and in my articles of stipulation with my father, chemistry and belles lettres are _specially_ prohibited. It was a useless prohibition, for Heaven knows, chemistry would have been the last study I should have flown to in my present state of mind. For how can he look minutely into the intimate structure of things, and resolve them into their simple and elementary substance, whose own disordered mind is incapable of analyzing the passions by which it is agitated, of ascertaining the reciprocal relation of its incoherent ideas, or combining them in different proportions (from those by which they were united by chance,) in order to join a new and useful compound for the benefit of future life? As for belles lettres! so blunted are all those powers once so “Active and strong, and feelingly alive, To each fine impulse,” that not _one “pansee coleur de rose”_ lingers on the surface of my faded imagination, and I should turn with as much apathy from the sentimental sorcery of _Rosseau_, as from the volumnious verbosity of an High German doctor; yawn over “The Pleasures of Memory,” and run the risk of falling fast asleep with the brilliant _Madame de Sevigne_ in my hand. So send me a Fahrenheit, that I may bend the few coldly mechanical powers left me, to ascertain the temperature of my wild western _territories_, and expect my letters from thence to be only filled with the summary results of metoric instruments, and synoptical views of common phenomena. Adieu. H. M. THE WILD IRISH GIRL. LETTER I. TO J. D. ESQ., M. P. _Dublin, March_, ----, 17----