"The sober duties of a family had early been transferred to her sisters, as far beneath the attention of so fine a genius; while she abandoned herself to studies which kept her imagination in a fever, and to a passion which those studies continually fed and inflamed. Both together completed her delirium. She was ardent, generous, and sincere; but violent, imprudent, and vain to excess. She set the opinion of the world at complete defiance, and was not only totally destitute of judgment and discretion herself, but despised them in others. Her lover and her muse were to her instead of the whole world. "After having for some years exchanged sonnets, under the names of Laura and Petrarch, and elegies under those of Sappho and Phaon; the lover, to whom all this had been mere sport, the gratification of vanity, and the recreation of an idle hour grew weary. Younger and fairer he another saw. He drew off. Her verses were left unanswered, her reproaches unpitied. Laura wept, and Sappho raved in vain. "The poor girl, to whom all this visionary romance had been a serious occupation, which had swallowed up cares and duties, now realized the woes she had so often admired and described. Her upbraidings only served to alienate still more the heart of her deserter; and her despair, which he had the cruelty to treat as fictitious, was to him a subject of mirth and ridicule. Her letters were exposed, her expostulatory verses read at clubs and taverns, and the unhappy Sappho toasted in derision. "All her ideal refinements now degenerated into practical improprieties. The public avowal of her passion drew on her from the world charges which she had not merited. Her reputation was wounded, her health declined, her peace was destroyed. She experienced the dishonors of guilt without its turpitude, and in the bloom of life fell, the melancholy victim to a mistaken education and an undisciplined mind." Mrs. Stanley dropped a silent tear to the memory of her unhappy friend, the energies of whose mind she said would, had they been lightly directed, have formed a fine character. "But none of the things of which I have been speaking," resumed Mr. Stanley, "are the great and primary objects of instruction. The inculcation of fortitude, prudence, humility, temperance, self-denial--this is education. These are things we endeavor to promote far more than arts or languages. These are tempers, the habit of which should be laid in early, and followed up constantly, as there is no day in life which will not call them into exercise; and how can that be practiced which has never been acquired?