onsolation in the fact, that, in proportion to their extent,
she could bestow a fuller share of sympathy, a more ample
measure of kindness than ever, out of the ever-springing
sources of tenderness, with which her own heart overflowed.

Poor Mrs. Hatton! she was the best of women, but not the
wisest of governesses. During the years that she superintended
my education, she had never been able to disagree with me, as
to grammar and arithmetic being dull and perfectly useless
studies; or help agreeing with me that Sir Walter Scott's
novels improved the mind infinitely more than Goldsmith's
History of England; and so I read novels to her, and she
listened with delighted attention--I wrote poetry, which she
read aloud, and declared was the best that had ever been
written--I put aside all the books that bored me, all the
exercises that puzzled me, and she heartily concurred with me,
in pronouncing them all highly unprofitable and superfluous.

Dear Mrs. Hatton! she was not wise; but such guileless,
warm-hearted lack of wisdom as hers, often supplied the place
of those mental qualifications which are too seldom united to
a perfect singleness of heart and simplicity of character.

She was, indeed, a capital travelling companion; as we passed
the gates of Elmsley I said to her, "Do you know, dear Mrs.
Hatton, that I am apt to be very silent in a carriage; shall
you mind it?"

"It is the very thing I like best, dear, to drive along and
look about me, and not have the trouble of talking. The very
thing I like best; there is nothing so tiring as to talk in a
carriage." And settling herself in her corner, she gave
herself up to looking about her; and she was right; for what
in the world is so pleasant, as a living German authoress
says, as "on a fine summer morning through a lovely country
rapidly to fly, like the bird, that wants nothing of the world
but its surface to skim over. This is the really enjoyable
part of travelling. The inn life is wearisome; the passage
through towns is fatiguing. The admiration due to the
treasures of art, to the wonders of science, is a task from
which one would sometimes gladly buy one's self off, at the
price of a day of wood-cleaving or water-carrying. But to lean
back in perfect quiet in a carriage while it rolls lightly and
easily along a good road; to have a variety of pictures pass
before one's eyes as in a dream, each remaining long enough to
please, none long enough to tire; to allow