andsome, but her figure is somewhat less delicate.
She has a fine temper, and strong virtues. The little faults she has,
seem to flow from the excess of her good qualities. Her susceptibility
is extreme, and to guide and guard it, finds employment for her
mother's fondness, and her father's prudence. Her heart overflows with
gratitude for the smallest service. This warmth of her tenderness keeps
her affections in more lively exercise than her judgment; it leads her
to over-rate the merit of those she loves, and to estimate their
excellences, less by their own worth than by their kindness to her. She
soon behaved to me with the most engaging frankness, and her innocent
vivacity encouraged, in return, that affectionate freedom with which one
treats a beloved sister.

The other children are gay, lovely, interesting, and sweet-tempered.
Their several acquisitions, for I detest the term _accomplishments_,
since it has been warped from the true meaning in which Milton used it,
seem to be so many individual contributions brought in to enrich the
common stock of domestic delight. Their talents are never put into
exercise by artificial excitements. Habitual industry, quiet exertion,
successive employments, affectionate intercourse, and gay and animated
relaxation, make up the round of their cheerful day.

I could not forbear admiring in this happy family the graceful union of
piety with cheerfulness; strictness of principle embellished, but never
relaxed by gayety of manners; a gayety, not such as requires turbulent
pleasures to stimulate it, but evidently the serene, yet animated,
result of well-regulated minds;--of minds actuated by a tenderness of
conscience, habitually alive to the perception of the smallest sin, and
kindling into holy gratitude at the smallest mercy.

I often called to my mind that my father, in order to prevent my being
deceived, and run away with by persons who appeared lively at first
sight, had early accustomed me to discriminate carefully, whether it was
not the _animal_ only that was lively, and the man dull. I have found
this caution of no small use in my observations on the other sex. I had
frequently remarked, that the musical and the dancing ladies, and those
who were most admired for modish attainments, had little _intellectual_
gayety. In numerous instances I found that the mind was the only part
which was not kept in action; and no wonder, for it was the only part
which had received no previo