She had been brought
up with the consciousness of other objects of female attainment and
accomplishment than embroidery, 'the complete art of making pastry,'
and reading 'The Whole Duty of Man.' She had profited, when a child,
by the guidance of her brother's tutor, who had bestowed no unfruitful
pains upon no ordinary capacity. She was a good linguist, a fine
musician, was well read in our elder poets and their Italian
originals, was no unskilful artist, and had acquired some knowledge
of botany when wandering, as a girl, in her native woods. Since her
retirement to Cherbury, reading had been her chief resource. The hall
contained a library whose shelves, indeed, were more full than choice;
but, amid folios of theological controversy and civil law, there might
be found the first editions of most of the celebrated writers of the
reign of Anne, which the contemporary proprietor of Cherbury, a man of
wit and fashion in his day, had duly collected in his yearly visits to
the metropolis, and finally deposited in the family book-room.
The education of her daughter was not only the principal duty of Lady
Annabel, but her chief delight. To cultivate the nascent intelligence
of a child, in those days, was not the mere piece of scientific
mechanism that the admirable labours of so many ingenious writers have
since permitted it comparatively to become.
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