GERMANY.
Before we slept, S*** had made a bargain for a boat to carry us to Mayence, 30 Aug., 1814.and the next morning, bidding adieu to Switzerland, we embarked in a boat laden with merchandize, but where we had no fellow-passengers to disturb our tranquillity by their vulgarity and rudeness. The wind was violently against us, but the stream, aided by a slight exertion from the rowers, carried us on; the sun shone pleasantly, S*** read aloud to us Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters from Norway,[1] and we passed our time delightfully.
The evening was such as to find few parallels
- ↑ Presumably Mrs. Shelley had with her a copy of the little volume in which her mother had published such portions of her letters to Imlay as were not private, under the title of Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. This was published in 1796; and a second edition appeared in 1802, while, in 1798, Godwin had printed among his wife's Posthumous Works the private portions of the letters to Imlay. Mr. C. Kegan Paul has recently (1879) published the personal narrative of this truly beautiful character as unfolded in her letters to Imlay; but the admirable descriptive portions published by the writer herself in 1796 are not given in Mr. Paul's book (Mary Wollstonecraft: Letters to Imlay).
