flowers. The grief, though never grief was so
beautifully eloquent, is rather too exquisite, her substantial ground
for lamentation considered."

Seeing me going to speak, she stopped me with a smile, saying, "I see by
your looks that you are going, with Mr. Addison, to vindicate the poet,
and to call this a just appropriation of the sentiment to the sex; but
surely the disproportion in the feeling here is rather too violent,
though I own the loss of her flowers _might_ have aggravated any common
privation. There is, however, no female character in the whole compass
of poetry in which I have ever taken so lively an interest, and no poem
that ever took such powerful possession of my mind."

If any thing had been wanting to my full assurance of the sympathy of
our tastes and feelings, this would have completed my conviction. It
struck me as the Virgilian lots formerly struck the superstitious. Our
mutual admiration of the Paradise Lost, and of its heroine, seemed to
bring us nearer together than we had yet been. Her remarks, which I
gradually drew from her in the course of our walk, on the construction
of the fable, the richness of the imagery, the elevation of the
language, the sublimity and just appropriation of the sentiments, the
artful structure of the verse, and the variety of the characters,
convinced me that she had imbibed her taste from the purest sources. It
was easy to trace her knowledge of the best authors, though she quoted
none.

"This," said I exultingly to myself, "is the true learning for a lady; a
knowledge that is rather detected than displayed, that is felt in its
effects on her mind and conversation; that is seen, not by her citing
learned names, or adducing long quotations, but in the general result,
by the delicacy of her taste, and the correctness of her sentiments."

In our way home I made a merit with little Kate, not only by rescuing
her hat from the hedge, but by making a little provision of wood under
it, of larger sticks than she could gather, which she joyfully promised
to assist the grand-daughter in carrying to the cottage.

I ventured, with as much diffidence as if I had been soliciting a
pension for myself, to entreat that I might be permitted to undertake
the putting forward Dame Alice's little girl in the world, as soon as
she should be released from her attendance on her grandmother. My
proposal was graciously accepted, on condition that it met with Mr. and
Mrs. Stanley's appro