136 LIFE OF MYTTOiV. 



" It is jealousy's peculiar nature 

 To swell small things to great ; nay, out of nought 

 To conjure much ; and then to lose ils reason 

 Amid tlie hideous phantoms it has formed." 



In the case before us, not only the groundlessness, 

 but the unreasonableness of his suspicions, were such 

 as could have emanated from no sound mind, which 

 never dreams of effects unconnected with a cause ; 

 and this is nearly the sole mitigation I have to offer 

 for one of the greatest blemishes human nature can 

 sustain. On this point he was mad ; on others, only 

 eccentric ; but as has been falsely said of wit, " thin 

 partitions do t/ietr bounds divide." The fate of each 

 of these ladies, however, has been a hard one. The 

 one dropped into an early grave ; the other would 

 have been torn from him by her friends, had she 

 not made up her mind to abandon him, lest, like 

 Semele in Jupiter's, she might have found her death 

 in his embraces."'" 



But, setting aside this monomaniasm, what further 



* So tender is woman's fame, that the very breath of columny will 

 taint it. It behoves me then to say, that, in their situation as wives, 

 two more correct in their conduct mi;jht have been searched for in vain, 

 than the ladies I am now alluding to. Any man but Mr. Mytton would 

 have been proud of exhibiting them in public, but had they lived in 

 the days of Pericles, or even been the wives of the Great Mogul, they 

 could scarcely have been more secluded than they were at H.ilsion. 



