qualities; and enjoying, through cultivation, a fund of elegant and useful knowledge, and a strongly retentive memory, with the addition of beauty of face and person; in Miss Wainfleet was completed one of those examples which are sometimes witnessed, of all that crown, in the composition of a single individual, at once the elements of human being, and the proudest of the improvements of society. If it is wise, and even just, either for homage, or for emulation, sometimes to consider human creatures one by one, and each according to his individual rank, as well as at other times to consider all as upon the single level of the crowd; then, the spectacle of this female stranger at Burford Cottage was not unworthy, as it seems to me, of that distinction, nor without the value which belongs to any thing that has the power of teaching an exalted lesson. Miss Wainfleet owed much to nature, much to fortune, much to the care of others, much to the influence, and capabilities, and stores, of the society and country in which she had been born and bred; but she owed likewise much to an understanding continually employed in improving and strengthening itself; and to a heart continually directed, elevated, purified, and softened, by the force and justness of her understanding. All without would have been useless, except for all within. She was making herself, while other things made her; and here it was that she was capable of being copied. As there was nothing dull, so also there was nothing evil in her countenance, but the reverse; and this was the beauty-paramount among her several beauties. There is, in the single species of humanity, and upon the surface of whatever is essential, universal, and deeper seated, so complete an assemblage of all the various characteristics of all the

species of the lower animal creation; humanity sinks so often into every thing that we call brutish, as well as rises so often into every thing that we call angelic; it is sometimes deformed with so many hideous vices and low desires, as well as sometimes beautified with so many splendid virtues and noble aspirations; it displays within itself the motley group of swine, and ape, and antelope; of tiger, wolf, and lamb; of eagle, ostrich, and jackdaw; of bee, and ant, and hornet, wasp, and butterfly; that every member of the large and ductile family is called upon by nature, early and late, and late and early in the course of his progress, to declare and to fashion himself according to his will, as to the animal figure which, morally speaking, he most desires to resemble! His comeliness and his majesty of aspect are thus at his own mercy truths which are well and strongly expressed in the image of the Eastern fable, where the spirit of a bad man, being met and terrified by the meeting of a spirit deformed and ferocious in countenance and figure, hears from the latter this afflicting news: "I was your own genius during your lifetime. I was beautiful when I was given to you, and while you were sensible and innocent; and it is but to your folly, and to your crimes, that I owe it to have become ugly!"

"

But, if the reader asks, what were those means, of Miss Wainfleet's own employment, to which I have alluded and which had for their effect the strengthening of her natural understanding, the enlarging of her accidental knowledge, and the dulcifying of her natural sweetness of heart; these were,-reflection, without which opportunity produces nothing; application, without which nothing is acquired; attention, without

which nothing is remembered, nor even heard nor seen; and above all, that self-devotion to the due claims of others; that prostration of self before the honest interests of our neighbours; that tenderness for the feelings; that respect for the merits; that forbearance from the injury, including the humiliation, of all about us; and that ardour to oblige, to serve, to gratify, and to make happy all we can reach, and that good-nature which is more yielding and more officious than even servility; which serves but to please, and flatters but to enliven and encourage: these were the means and arts through which Miss Wainfleet had become, and was daily becoming, more excellent in herself, more admirable in the view of others; more wise, more happy, more lovable, more beloved, and even more lovely, than, without the efforts of her own, either nature, culture, friends, or country could have made her!

It falls not, however, within my province, to bring this beautiful figure into conspicuous action! A little Robin might be charmed with the aspect of its features, and be an observer of its familiar motions; but it can belong only to eyes and hearts of grander structure and susceptibilities than mine, to penetrate and to appreciate it in the higher walks of its deportment! After drawing Miss Wainfleet's likeness, I have nothing to relate of her; or nothing but what assorts with the faintest lines and softest colours in the picture! I know her only as a kind and laughing girl; the intelligent companion of Mrs. Paulett; and the amusing teacher, and the jocund playmate, of Emily and Richard.

But she could join, too, with Mr. Paulett, in explor

ing and recounting the charms and riches of the natural universe; for, besides her acquaintance with books of history, biography, poetry, and travel, she was skilled, like the rest of the modern world, in botany, zoology, chemistry, and the kindred sciences; or knew enough of them, at least, to listen with interest and enjoyment, and communicate with pleasure and propriety, the incessant details which hourly diffusion and research are making matters of elegant, attractive, and instructive conversation. It was hence that many of those topics of inquiry which had hitherto been favourites at the cottage, still continued such after the arrival of Miss Wainfleet; and, as for me, my attention was peculiarly to be caught, when, as now, and as upon former occasions, the remarks made, however widely they ranged before they were finished, had their beginning in some reference to myself, or to my species!

While I was hopping over the carpet, as had become frequent with me, Emily, first looking with unusual scrutiny at the colour of my breast, observed to Miss Wainfleet, that either all Red-breasts were not alike, or else some of the poets whom they had read together were strangely in the wrong; for some had called their breasts rosy, and others crimson, while their Robin's, she was sure, was neither one nor the other? But, to this, Miss Wainfleet replied, that our breasts, as Emily might rest assured, were all of the same colour; and that the poets, in seeking to avoid the common and comprehensive epithet of red, only involved themselves. in difficulties from which there was no escape: name of red," said she, "embraces the description of so great a variety of reds, that it cannot but include the real red of the pretty Robin's breast; but how to describe that red particularly, by the name of

The

any hue of red, or by comparison with any thing red, besides itself, is more, than I, for one, can tell you. Certainly, it is neither rose-colour, nor crimson, nor even fire-colour, nor orange, which two latter make nearer approaches to the truth; but this is all that I can say upon the subject."

"of a

"And that reminds me, papa," said Richard, mistake in a book of travels which I have been reading; where, though you have told us that there is no such thing as a Red-breast in America, the traveller says that he saw Robin-red-breasts, in that country?"

"That, my dear Richard," answered Mr. Paulett, "is only a fresh example of what I have often told you to beware of; namely, the habit of Europeans (Europeans either by birth or by descent) to call the new things which they meet with in foreign countries, by the names of the old things which they have left at home; some slight resemblance of the one to the other, being all that can be alleged in the way of apology for the confused nomenclature thus introduced into natural history. In the present case, however, there has been a further temptation for the use of the name of 'Red-breast,' and one of which the influence has been very wide in human language. To say only that a bird has a 'red breast,' is to give it a description so very general, that it may as easily apply to many birds as to one; and it is because, at their roots, all names or words usually signify no more than general qualities, that, in much more extensive examples than this, the same name, or at least the same radical word, has been made applicable to numerous objects that, under many important aspects, have no kind of likeness to each other. Now, in North America, there is a bird with a red breast, and it is called by the Eng