viii
the ruder sex by whom she found herself encompassed. But maternal vigilance effectually obviated this danger, by instilling into her a double portion of bashfulness and maidenly reserve; and she was accustomed to ascribe an uneasy sense of constraint in mixed society, which she could never entirely shake off, to the strictness and seclusion in which it had thus become her fate to be educated. Her recollections of childhood and early youth were, in fact, not associated with much of the pleasure and gaiety usually attendant upon that period of life: but it must be regarded as a circumstance favourable, rather than otherwise, to the unfolding of her genius, to have been thus left to find, or make in solitude her own objects of interest and pursuit. The love of rural nature sunk deep into her heart; her vivid fancy exerted itself to colour, to animate, and to diversify all the objects which surrounded her: the few but choice authors of her father's li-
