fested. Books were
her only resource in every unoccupied hour. From her walks with her
father, and her domestic employments with her mother, she turned to
her little library and to her chamber window, and lost herself in the
limitless realms of thought. It is often imagined that character is
the result of accident--that there is a native and inherent tendency,
which triumphs over circumstances, and works out its own results.
Without denying that there may be different intellectual gifts with
which the soul may be endowed as it comes from the hand of the
Creator, it surely is not difficult to perceive that the peculiar
training through which the childhood of Jane was conducted was
calculated to form the peculiar character which she developed.

In a bright summer's afternoon she might be seen sauntering along the
Boulevards, led by her father's hand, gazing upon that scene of gayety
with which the eye is never wearied. A gilded coach, drawn by the most
beautiful horses in the richest trappings, sweeps along the streets--a
gorgeous vision. Servants in showy livery, and out-riders proudly
mounted, invest the spectacle with a degree of grandeur, beneath which
the imagination of a child sinks exhausted. Phlippon takes his little
daughter in his arms to show her the sight, and, as she gazes in
infantile wonder and delight, the discontented father says, "Look at
that lord, and lady, and child, lolling so voluptuously in their
coach. They have no right there. Why must I and my child walk on this
hot pavement, while they repose on velvet cushions and revel in all
luxury? Oppressive laws compel me to pay a portion of my hard earnings
to support them in their pride and indolence. But a time will come
when the people will awake to the consciousness of their wrongs, and
their tyrants will tremble before them." He continues his walk in
moody silence, brooding over his sense of injustice. They return to
their home. Jane wishes that her father kept a carriage, and liveried
servants and out-riders. She thinks of politics, and of the tyranny of
kings and nobles, and of the unjust inequalities of man. She retires
to the solitude of her loved chamber window, and reads of Aristides
the Just, of Themistocles with his Spartan virtues, of Brutus, and of
the mother of the Gracchi. Greece and Rome rise before her in all
their ancient renown. She despises the frivolity of Paris, the
effeminacy of the moderns, and her youthful bosom throbs with the