Letters on Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (Mary Wollstonecraft)

I had heard of Mary Shelley (Frankenstein, The Last Man) but not her mother: Mary Wollstonecraft. The spur of a friend (she's reading the mother/daughter bio) led me to these letters (free via Kindle). A good romantic read (even if interrupting a reread of Dante's Comedy) before heading back to school (already tasting it this week).

Anyway, this is a good bit alluded to in the introduction: a remembrance of a childhood friend, Fanny Blood, who had died young of consumption:

     When a warm heart has received strong impressions, they are not to be effaced. Emotions become sentiments, and the imagination renders even transient sensations permanent by fondly retracing them. I cannot, without a thrill of delight, recollect views I have seen, which are not to be forgotten, nor looks I have felt in every nerve, which I shall never more meet. The grave has closed over a dear friend, the friend of my youth. Still she is present in me, and I hear her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath.

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