with impunity; he empties his coffers of every dollar to adorn the apparel of his wife and daughters. Of my female students there was none equal in capacity to Virginia. The mind of this fair creature was susceptible of every culture; but it had been neglected, and I opened to her worlds of sentiment and knowledge. Geography was one of our favourite studies. The greatest trifler can scarce inspect a map without learning something; but my lovely pupil always rose from it with a considerable accession of knowledge. Imparting such new ideas was no undelightful employment, and I often addressed my rose of May in an appropriate Ode. ODE TO VIRGINIA, LOOKING OVER A MAP. POWERFUL as the magic wand, Displaying far each distant land, Is that angel-hand to me, When it points each realm and sea. Plac'd in geographic mood, Smiling, shew the pictur'd flood, Where along the Red Sea sea-coast, Waves o'erwhelm'd the Egyptian host. Again the imag'd scene survey, The rolling Hellespontic Sea; Whence the Persian from the shore, Proudly pass'd his millions o'er. See! that little Isle afar And behold to nearer view, It was my desire to open to my pupil the Treasures of Shakespeare; of that poet whose works will be studied with increasing rapture on the banks of the Mississippi, the Ohio and Potomac, when the language in which Voltaire reviled him. shall have perished with the wreck of nations. But the Library of the plantation did not supply the poet of nature; and I was almost in despair, when on a shelf in a miserable log-house I found the first volume of Theobald's edition. The book I obtained for a trifle, and I removed it to my school. I shall not easily forget the feeling with which my pupil read aloud that beautiful and natural scene in the Tempest, where Miranda sympathizes with Ferdinand, who is bearing logs to Prospero's cell. No scene can be more exquisitely tender, and no lips could give juster utterance to the speeches of its characters than those of my fair disciple. Her voice possessed more magic than Prospero's wand. I was transported into fairy land. I was rapt in a delicious dream from which it was misery to be waked. All around 1 was enchantment. And what Ferdinand had before exclaimed on hearing the music of Ariel, I applied in secret to the voice of Virginia This is no mortal business, nor no sound That the earth owns! The female mind seems peculiarly adapted to relish tender poetry; and in the Elegy of Gray, and the Ballad of Goldsmith, I spread before my pupil a rich banquet to exercise reflection. Such poets are ever read with advantage, for they embellish nature and virtue with an elevated but chaste imagination. My pupil was perhaps not a regular beauty; but her form was exquisitely delicate; and there were a spirit and expression in her countenance that charmed more than mere regular features. Her hair was rather light for eyes perfectly black. Voila mon Eleve: il faut encore y joindre Nez retroussé comme le veut l'Amour. As the studies of my pupil never tired, so the relation of them will never fatigue me. She learnt French with avidity, and it was no unpleasant task to hear her give utterance to the musical language of a Sevigné. The Epic Narrative of Fenelon, and the pathetic Tale of Saint Pierre, were the French books that most delighted her. But she thought the translation of Paul and Virginia from the pen of Miss Helen Maria Williams, more beautiful in her attire than that of the author. "The Sonnets," exclaimed Vir ginia, "are so pretty. Indeed! Indeed! Sir, "they are!" The Rose, the queen of flowers, and theme of the Persian poets, grew abundantly in the garden; and my girls never came to school without having gathered clusters of them to decorate their dress. Hence I breathed only fragrance in a circle of loveliness. How unspeakably delightful was the employment of cultivating the taste of Virginia! By the magic of the Belles Lettres I was opening the avenues of her innocent heart to friendship and to pity; I was exciting its natural susceptibility for every mild and tender passion that can soften humanity. Let the gloomy and austere moralist condemn woman to vegetate on the earth. Let him shut from her those sources of pure and exalted pleasure, arising from the contemplation of the sublime and the beautiful. Such inhibitions become the cynic in his cell; but let a man of the world and of elegant education ask his heart what conveyed to it such transports in the comof a particular female. Was it the lustre of the eye? the redness of the lip? or the peculiar, conformation of the features? No. The beauty of countenance which captivates a soul pany exalted by education, depends not upon any known rule of proportion, but is connected with sentiment; it is the emanation of intellectual excellence, the beaming forth of that moral sense which imparts a magic to every look, and constitutes expression. Women, like men, without education, are not of a social but gregarious nature. They herd together, but they exchange no ideas. And there is certainly the same difference between an educated and uneducated woman, as between one living and one dead. Succession is only perceived by variation, and in the delightful employment of teaching my lovely pupil all I knew, the hours of the morning were contracted to a moment by the earnest application of my mind to its object; time took a new pair of wings, and the school-door, which faced the south, had the sun staring full upon it, before I recollected that my attention ought to be divided, and not consecrated to one scholar. Hence I frequently protracted the studies of the children till one, or half past one o'clock; a practice that did not fail to call forth the exclamations both of the white and the black people. Upon my word, Mr. Ball would say, this gentleman is diligent; and Aunt Patty the negro cook would remark," He good cool-mossa that; he not "like old Hodgkinson and old Harris, who let the boys out before twelve. He deserve good wages!" Having sent the young ladies to the family mansion, I told the boys to break up; and in a |