by instruction, guides benignity of disposition by prudence, and adorns beauty by apposite accomplishments; she is rewarded for her virtues, by the heart and hand of a man of rank, fortune, and merit; and becomes the sole comfort of her father, in his declining years, bent down by affliction, for the fatal effects of his conduct towards his more favoured children. "The character of the father himself," Hamilton observed, "displays strong discrimination; he is a of naturally good intentions, and respectable capacity; but in his counsels and conduct, not possessing that firmness, without which, ability and disposition can, neither in private or public life, regularly and steadily produce beneficial effects. He is governed by talents beneath his own, one of the greatest sources of error and defect in conduct. Wanting stability of principle, he is in a state
