 Lady Arundell.—I added my income and family to hers.—Her house was fortunately so near London, as to allow me the advantage of procuring the first instructors for my daughter, and the infirm state of Lady Arundell's health, rendering her as much a prisoner from necessity, as I was from choice, both insensibly found in the improvement of my daughter, a mild and growing satisfaction, which more than made amends for the world we shut out.
Ah! could I desire a greater pleasure? Pardon, madam, the fond extravagance

of maternal love, and allow me to present to you the darling of my heart in her sixteenth year. Already something taller than myself, to a form that united the strictest symmetry with the wild and variable graces of glowing youth, my Mary added the perfect features of her father; exquisitely feminized by a complexion transparently fair, and a bloom alike delicate and vivid; her hair, of the golden brown I have described as peculiar to his, fell below her waist in a profusion of artless ringlets, heightening her beauty even to luxuriance.—If she had borrowed any thing from me, it was the collected modesty of her mien; and from my sister she had stolen that penetrating, fascinating smile, those two alone of all I ever saw were gifted with:—alas, it was now wholly her own.—Although lightness and elasticity characterized her figure, every limb was rounded even to polishing, and never did I contemplate the soft turn of her white arms when raised to touch the lute, without thinking those

more perfect than even her face.—Her voice was no less sweet in speaking than singing; with this difference—in the first she softened the soul to pleasure, in the last, elevated it to rapture.—Her understanding was strong and penetrating, yet elevated and refined.—Her sensibility (the first formed of all her feelings) was Father deep than ardent. Maternal experience had moderated the enthusiasm incident to youth, nor was it obvious in any instance but the love of knowledge. Incessant, unremitting, in her studies, books were her only extravagance, and musick her only relaxation. To compensate for the worldly pleasures I judged it prudence to deprive her of, I was lavish in indulgences to which her taste naturally led: I kept musicians on purpose to accompany her, and found in the years filled up by herself and her employments, that sweet though saddened pleasure parents only know, and which, perhaps, more than makes us amends for all the more lively ones it recalls to

our memory. In effect, the more lovely she grew, the
