she was pleased to say to shame me. She was so much above reserve as
disguise. So communicative that no young lady could be in her company
half an hour, and not carry away instruction with her, whatever was the
topic. Yet all sweetly insinuated; nothing given with the air of
prescription; so that while she seemed to ask a question for
information-sake, she dropt in the needful instruction, and left the
instructed unable to decide whether the thought (which being started,
she, the instructed, could improve) came primarily from herself, or from
the sweet instructress.

She had a pretty hand at drawing, which she obtained with very little
instruction. Her time was too much taken up to allow, though to so fine
an art, the attention which was necessary to make her greatly excel in
it: and she used to say, 'That she was afraid of aiming at too many
things, for fear she should not be tolerable at any thing.'

For her years, and her opportunities, she was an extraordinary judge of
painting. In this, as in every thing else, nature was her art, her art
was nature. She even prettily performed in it. Her grandfather, for
this reason, bequeathed to her all the family pictures. Charming was her
fancy: alike sweet and easy was every touch of her pencil and her pen.
Yet her judgment exceeded her performance. She did not practise enough
to excel in the executive part. She could not in every thing excel.
But, upon the whole, she knew what every subject required according to
the nature of it; in other words, was an absolute mistress of the
should-be.

To give a familiar instance for the sake of young ladies; she (untaught)
observed when but a child, that the sun, moon, and stars, never appeared
at once; and were therefore never to be in one piece; that bears, tigers,
lions, were not natives of an English climate, and should not therefore
have place in an English landscape; that these ravagers of the forest
consorted not with lambs, kids, or fawns; nor kites, hawks, and vultures,
with doves, partridges, or pheasants.

And, alas! she knew, before she was nineteen years of age, by fatal
experience she knew! that all these beasts and birds of prey were
outdone, in treacherous cruelty, by MAN! Vile, barbarous, plotting,
destructive man! who, infinitely less excusable than those, destroys,
through wantonness and sport, what those only destroy through hunger and
necessity!

The mere pretenders to those branches of science which s