With the earnest perusal of Shakspeare and Thomson was interspersed that of the German poets, Klopstock and Kotzebue, and also some of the modern travellers and ancient historians. Among the latter was Josephus, whose study did not, on the whole, produce any great satisfaction. I found myself more attracted by the historians of the Mother Land, still, with immaturity of taste, preferring the conciseness of Goldsmith to the discursive and classic Hume. A reading society of a few young people was commenced and sustained with various fluctuations, where the prescribed course was the history of our own country, with a garnish of the poems of Walter Scott. Attached to this circle were some fine readers, among whom I recollect with unalloyed pleasure the perfect enunciation and emphasis of a lady who afterwards, as the wife of the Rev. Samuel Nott, went out with our first band of missionaries to Asia. Passages from the poets, thus rendered by her, come back over the waste of years with clear, unchanged melody. I think the intonations of fine reading are longer and more definitely recollected than those of music. The latter is sometimes permitted to overpower the words with which it is combined, thus having only the vibrations of the ear, or the transient pleasure of the thrilling nerves to rely upon. But the other, walking hand in hand with sentiment, or deathless knowledge, adheres with augmented force. The young of my own sex are not often fully aware of the
