of whom is about the age of Lucilla. She herself had had a pious
but a very narrow education. Her excessive grief for the loss of her
husband augmented her natural love of retirement which she cultivated,
not to the purpose of improvement, but to the indulgence of melancholy.
Soon after she settled here, we heard how much good she did, and in how
exemplary a manner she lived, before we saw her. She was not very easy
of access even to us; and after we had made our way to her, we were the
only visitors she admitted for a long time. We soon learned to admire
her deadness to the world, and her unaffected humility. Our esteem for
her increased with our closer intercourse, which however enabled us also
to observe some considerable mistakes in her judgment, especially in the
mode in which she was training up her daughters. These errors we
regretted, and with all possible tenderness ventured to point out to
her. The girls were the prettiest demure little nuns you ever saw, mute
and timid, cheerless and inactive, but kind, good, and gentle.

"Their pious mother, who was naturally of a fearful and doubting mind,
had had this pensive turn increased by several early domestic losses,
which, even previous to Sir George's death, had contributed to fix
something of a too tender and hopeless melancholy on her whole
character. There are two refuges for the afflicted; two diametrically
opposite ways of getting out of sorrow--religion and the world. Lady
Aston had wisely chosen the former. But her scrupulous spirit had made
the narrow way narrower than religion required. She read the Scriptures
diligently, and she prayed over them devoutly; but she had no judicious
friend to direct her in these important studies. As your Mrs. Ranby
attended only to the doctrines, and our friend Lady Belfield trusted
indefinitely to the promises, so poor Lady Aston's broken spirit was too
exclusively carried to dwell on the threatenings; together with the
rigid performance of those duties which she earnestly hoped might enable
her to escape them. This round of duty, of watchfulness, and prayer, she
invariably performed with almost the sanctity of an apostle, but with a
little too much of the scrupulosity of an ascetic. While too many were
rejoicing with unfounded confidence in those animating passages of
Scripture, which the whole tenor of their lives demonstrates not to
belong to them, she trembled at those denunciations which she could not
fairly apply to