ABSTRACT
THIS Lady is one of those personages who, but a few years since, dissatisfied with the station of life in which Providence had placed her, and heedless of the amiable and private qualities of her sex, dashed back the curtain of privacy, and rushed to the pinnacle of popularity. Fortunately for this country, for the sex, and for posterity, such instances have not been multiplied; the climate of Great Britain has not been congenial to their production; a few only of such individuals as a Macauley and a Wollstoneeroft have attained a premature state, while those who have been cultivated until they reached maturity, have been, like the heroine of this sketch, transplanted to warmer regions, leaving the poisonous stings of their false philosophy to be corrected by the religious anodynes of a More, a Hamilton, and a West. Helen Maria Williams, otherwise Laura Matilda, which latter was at one time her poetical cognomen, has been a conspicuous figure during the revolution in France, where she has resided almost from the very beginning of its troubles.
