"His heart glowed with paternal fondness and interesting solicitude, when he beheld the countenance of his child sparkling with intelligence, or traced the progress of reason in her awakened curiosity when any new object attracted her attention or exercised her imagination." Delightful indeed were the sensations of a parent in the contemplation of so fair a prospect, which in some degree recalled again to his bosom some transient gleams of happiness. The season was now far advanced in autumn, and the trees were nearly stripped of their foliage; the radiant sun had in part withdrawn his enlivening rays to give place to the approaching coldness of winter, when Alida left her home, amid the innumerable regrets of her juvenile companions, to accompany her father to the city to finish her education. They journeyed in a stage-coach from the village of ----, which, in the course of a few hours, conveyed them amid the tumultuous din of the busy metropolis. The female seminary to which Alida repaired was pleasantly situated in the western part of the town, where the refreshing and salubrious breezes of the Hudson rendered it a healthy and desirable situation at all seasons of the year. Although her father had only performed his duty in placing his child once more at school, yet it was at a greater distance from the paternal roof than formerly, and when he returned again to his residence, he felt his situation more lonely than ever, and he could scarcely reconcile himself to the loss of her society. All was novel-like in the city to Alida, where she at once saw so many different objects to excite alternately her surprise, curiosity, and risibility, and where she experienced so many different sensations, arising from the sudden transition in being removed from scenes of uninterrupted tranquillity to those of gaiety and pleasure, of crowded streets and riotous entertainments, of obsequious beaux and dashing petits maîtres, and where all appeared to her one continued scene of business and confusion, scarcely reconcileable. In the meantime her mind became engrossed by various new occupations. Among her favourite studies was the French language, which, at this period, was considered as one of the necessary appendages to female education, when scarcely any new work could be read without a regret to those who did not understand it. Music, dancing, and drawing occupied her time alternately, and while these different amusements afforded a pleasing variety, they animated her mind anew with the powers of exertion that had been excited by early impressions--that whatever she attempted to learn, to be assiduous to learn it well, and that a mere superficial knowledge, in any science or accomplishment, was by no means desirable.