affection: she must be loved as much and in the
same way as she loves, or she will not be satisfied. Hence, quickness in
taking offence, petty jealousies and apprehensions lest she is neglected
or loses ground in people's love, a want of a calm and steady sense of
her own merits to secure her from these fits of imagined slights; for,
in the first place, she will, as is hinted at before, be in general
deficient in this just estimation of her own worth, and will further be
apt to forget everything of that kind in the present sense of supposed
injury. She will (all which is referable to the same cause) in the
company of others have too constant a craving for sympathy up to a
height beyond what her companions are capable of bestowing; this will
often be mortifying to herself, and burthensome to others; and should
circumstances be untoward, and her mind be not sufficiently furnished
with ideas and knowledge, this craving would be most pernicious to
herself, preying upon mind and body. She will be too easily pleased, apt
to overrate the merits of new acquaintances, subject to fits of
over-love and over-joy, in absence from those she loves full of fears
and apprehensions, &c., injurious to her health; her passions for the
most part will be happy and good, but she will be too little mistress of
them. The distinctions which her intellect will make will be apt, able,
and just, but in conversation she will be prone to overshoot herself,
and commit eloquent blunders through eagerness. In fine, her manners
will be frank and ardent, but they will want dignity; and a want of
dignity will be the general defect of her character.

Something of this sort of character, which I have thus loosely sketched,
and something of the sort of selfishness to which I have adverted, it
seems to me that under the best management you have reason to apprehend
for your daughter. If she should happen to be an only child, or the only
sister of brothers who would probably idolize her, one might prophesy
almost with absolute confidence that most of these qualities would be
found in her in a great degree. How then is the evil to be softened down
or prevented? Assuredly, not by mortifying her, which is the course
commonly pursued with such tempers; nor by preaching to her about her
own defects; nor by overrunning her infancy with books about good boys
and girls, and bad boys and girls, and all that trumpery; but (and this
is the only important thing I have to say