s considerable acquirements in
every thing which becomes a gentleman.

This visit exemplified a remark I had sometimes made, that shy
characters, who from natural timidity are reserved in general society,
open themselves with peculiar warmth and frankness to a few select
friends, or to an individual of whom they think kindly. A distant manner
is not always, as is suspected, the result of a cold heart, or a dull
head; nor is gayety necessarily connected with feeling. High animal
spirits, though they often evaporate in mere talk, yet by their warmth
and quickness of motion obtain the credit of strong sensibility: a
sensibility, however, of which the heart is not always the fountain.
While in the timid, that silence which is construed into pride,
indifference, or want of capacity, is often the effect of keen feelings.
Friendship is the genial climate in which such hearts disclose
themselves; they flourish in the shade, and kindness alone makes them
expand. A keen discerner will often detect, in such characters,
qualities which are not always connected with

the rattling tongue
Of saucy and audacious eloquence.

When people who have seen little of each other are thrown together,
nothing brings on free communication so quickly or so pleasantly, as
their being both intimate with a third person, for whom all parties
entertain one common sentiment. Mr. Stanley seemed always a point of
union between his neighbors and me.

After various topics had been discussed, Lady Aston remarked, that she
could now trace the goodness of Providence in having so ordered events,
as to make those things which she had so much dreaded at the time, work
out advantages which could not have been otherwise obtained for her.

"I had a singular aversion," added she, "to the thoughts of removing to
this place, and quitting Sir George's estate in Warwickshire, where I
had spent the happiest years of my life. When I had the misfortune to
lose him" (here a tear quietly strayed down her cheek), "I resolved
never to remove from the place where he died. I had fully persuaded
myself that it was a duty to do all I could to cherish grief. I obliged
myself as a law, to spend whole hours in walking round the place where
he was buried. These melancholy visits, the intervals of which were
filled with tears, prayers, and reading a few good, but not well chosen
books, made up the whole round of my sad existence. I had nearly
forgotten tha