420 
JOHN DAY, 
with him was a sine qua non in the character of a wife. When he 
dropped melted sealing wax upon her arms, she did not endure it 
heroically ; nor when he fired a pistol at her petticoats, which she 
believed charged with ball, could she help starting aside, or wholly 
suppress her screams. When he tried her fidelity in secret-keeping, 
by telling her well-invented tales, in which great danger would result 
from its being discovered, he once or twice detected her having im- 
parted them to the servants and to her play-fellows. He persisted, 
however, in these foolish experiments, and sustained considerable 
disappointment during a whole year’s residence in the vicinity of 
Litchfield. The difficulty seemed to be, in giving her a motive to self- 
exertion, self-denial, and heroism. It was against his plan to draw 
it from the usual sources, — pecuniary reward, luxury, ambition, or 
vanity. His watchful cares had precluded all knowledge of the 
value of money, the reputation of beauty, and its concomitant desire 
of ornamented dress. The only inducement, tiierefore, which this 
girl could have to combat and subdue the natural preference in youth, 
of ease to pain, and of vacant sport to the labour of thinking, was the 
desire of pleasing her protector, though she knew not how or why he 
became such, and in that desire fear had greatly the ascendant of 
affection. At length, however, he renounced all hopes of moulding 
Sabrina into the being which his disordered imagination had formed ; 
and, ceasing now to behold her as his future wife, placed her at a 
boarding-school atSutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, where during three 
years she gained the esteem of her instructress, grew feminine, elegant, 
and amiable, adorning the situation in which she was placed. 
After this Mr. Day paid his addresses to two sisters in succession, 
both of whom rejected him. His appearance and manners were 
indeed not much calculated to charm ; and the austere singularities 
of his sentiments, and the caprices of his temper, all which were parts 
ofthe system of happiness he had formed to himself, w'ere tolerable, even 
by his friends, for a very short period. With the second of these ladies, 
indeed, he w'as so enamoured as to tell her that he would endeavour 
to acquire external refinements ; but, finding the progress he made 
insufficient to abate her dislike, he returned to his accustomed plainness 
and neglect of his person. But notwithstanding these disadvantages, he 
found a lady, a Miss Milnes of Yorkshire, then residing in London, to 
whom, after a singular courtship, he was united in 1778. The best 
part of his conduct in this affair w'as, his settling her whole fortune, 
which was as large as his own, upon herself, totally out of his present 
or future control. 
What follows is of a less amiable complexion. They retired, soon 
after their marriage, first to Stapleford Abbots, in Essex, and after- 
wards to Anningsley, near Chertsey, in Surrey. Here they had no car- 
riage, no appointed servant about Mrs. Day’s own person, nor luxury 
of any sort. Music, in wdiich she was a distinguished proficient, w'as 
deemed trivial. She banished her harpsichord and music books. Fre- 
quent experiments upon her temper and her attachment w'ere made 
by him, whom she lived but to obey and love. Over these, we are 
told, she often fret, but never repined ; and no wife, bound in the 
strictest fetters, as to the incapacity of claiming a separate mainte- 
