I experience a difficulty now, though then it would have been easy for me to describe what I felt on the occasion of this new display of this, to me, the ugliest parts of the hated system of evil which prevails in the world. The beautiful visions I had formed in my day-dreams, and which I had cherished as the source of my greatest happiness, appeared to me to have little or no relation to earth, or to earth's inhabitants; and a gloomy melancholy stole over me, and retained the dominion of my mind, in spite of every effort to shake it off. I endeavoured to make my feelings understood by Mrs Greville; but she, though participant in my views of moral perfection, could not comprehend why the turpitude of men should have the effect of making a good person incapable of enjoying what was truly virtuous in nature, and far less why it should produce a gloomy misery in those who were themselves truly good. What people cannot comprehend, they sometimes state to others, for the sake of assistance to their understandings; and my aunt, in the openness of her heart, stated my peculiarities to some friends, who coloured them to suit their fancies, and then communicated them to the families of the Semples, the Balls, and several others. My views, as I afterwards learned, were considered by these people as an impeachment of their morals; and I was set down as an arch-hypocrite, who wished to rear a character for goodness on the ruin of the reputation of others. The state of despondency into which I fell, precipitated me into a succession of my old nervous fits, and it was not for some time that I was again prevailed upon to visit the scenes where my feelings were exposed to such causes of laceration; but when I did again accompany my friend in her accustomed visits, I found that I had become unwelcome: oblique sneers, short, cutting taunts, and pointed insinuations, were directed against me; and though I then knew nothing of the cause, I felt, with that trembling sensitiveness which was peculiar to me, the poignancy of the poison of a hatred that was scarcely attempted to be concealed.