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 gayety usually attendant
upon that period of life; but it must be regarded as a circumstance
favorable, rather than otherwise, to the unfolding of her genius, to
be left thus to find, or make, in solitude, her own objects of
interest or pursuit. The love of rural nature sank deep in her heart.
Her vivid fancy excited itself to color, animate, and diversify, all
the objects which surrounded her; the few but choice authors of her
father's library, which she read and re-read, had leisure to make
their full impression,--to mould her sentiments, and to form her
taste. The spirit of devotion, early inculcated upon her as a duty,
opened to her, by degrees, an exhaustless source of tender and sublime
delight; and while yet a child, she was surprised to find herself a
poet.

Just at the period when longer seclusion might have proved seriously
injurious to her spirits, an invitation given to her learned and
exemplary father to undertake the office of classical tutor to a
highly respectable academy at Warrington, in Lancashire, was the
fortunate means of transplanting her to a more varied and animating
scene. This removal took place in 1758, when Miss Aikin had just
attained the age of fifteen; and the fifteen succeeding years, passed
by her at Warrington, comprehended probably the happiest, as well as
the most brilliant, portion of her existence. She was at this time
possessed of great beauty, distinct traces of which she retained to
the latest period of her life. Her person was slender, her complexion
fair, with the bloom of perfect health: her features were regular and
elegant; and her light blue eyes beamed with the light of wit and
fancy.

A solitary education had not produced on her its most frequent ill
effects, pride and self-importance; the reserve of her manners
proceeded solely from bashfulness, for her temper inclined her
strongly to friendship, and to social pleasures; and her active
imagination, which represented all objects tinged with hues
"unborrowed of the sun," served as a charm against that disgust with
common characters and daily incidents, which so frequently renders the
conscious possessor of superior talents at once unamiable and
unhappy.

Nor was she now in want of congenial associates. War