figure! I was then about twelve--she rather older, perhaps a year. She
died about a year or two afterwards, in consequence of a fall, which
injured her spine, and induced consumption. Her sister Augusta (by
some thought still more beautiful) died of the same malady; and it
was, indeed, in attending her, that Margaret met with the accident
which occasioned her own death. My sister told me, that when she went
to see her, shortly before her death, upon accidentally mentioning my
name, Margaret coloured through the paleness of mortality to the eyes,
to the great astonishment of my sister, who (residing with her
grandmother, Lady Holderness, and seeing but little of me, for family
reasons,) knew nothing of our attachment, nor could conceive why my
name should affect her at such a time. I knew nothing of her illness,
being at Harrow and in the country, till she was gone. Some years
after, I made an attempt at an elegy--a very dull one.[25]

"I do not recollect scarcely any thing equal to the _transparent_
beauty of my cousin, or to the sweetness of her temper, during the
short period of our intimacy. She looked as if she had been made out
of a rainbow--all beauty and peace.

"My passion had its usual effects upon me--I could not sleep--I could
not eat--I could not rest: and although I had reason to know that she
loved me, it was the texture of my life to think of the time which
must elapse before we could meet again, being usually about twelve
hours of separation! But I was a fool then, and am not much wiser
now."

He had been nearly two years under the tuition of Dr. Glennie, when
his mother, discontented at the slowness of his progress--though
being, herself, as we have seen, the principal cause of it--entreated