It was indeed Calantha’s misfortune to meet with too much kindness, or rather too much indulgence from almost all who surrounded her. The Duke, attentive solely to her health, watched her with the fondest solicitude, and the wildest wishes her fancy could invent, were heard with the most scrupulous attention and gratified with the most unbounded compliance. Yet, if affection, amounting to idolatry, could in any degree atone for the pain the errors of his child too often occasioned him, that affection was felt by Calantha for her Father. Her feelings indeed swelled with a tide too powerful for the unequal resistance of her understanding:—her motives appeared the very best, but the actions which resulted from them were absurd and exaggerated. Thoughts, swift as lightening, hurried through her brain:—projects, seducing, but visionary crowded upon her view: without a curb she followed the impulse of her feelings; and those feelings varied with every varying interest and impression. Such character is not uncommon, though rarely seen amongst the higher ranks of society. Early and constant intercourse with the world, and that polished sameness which results from it, smooths away all peculiarities; and whilst it assimilates individuals to each other, corrects many faults, and represses many virtues. Some indeed there are who affect to differ from others: but the very affectation proves that, in fact, they resemble the ordinary mass; and in general this assumption of singularity is found in low and common minds, who think that the reputation of talent and superiority belongs to the very defects and absurdities which alone have too often cast a shade upon the splendid light of genius, and degraded the hero and the poet, to the level of their imitators. Lovely indeed is that grace of manner, that perfect ease and refinement which so many attempt to acquire, and for which it is to be feared so much too often is renounced—the native vigour of mind, the blush of indignant and offended integrity, the open candour of truth, and all the long list of modest unassuming virtues, known only to a new and unsullied heart. Calantha turned with disgust from the slavish followers of prejudice. She disdained the beaten tract, and she thought that virtue would be for her a safe, a sufficient guide; that noble views, and pure intentions would conduct her in a higher sphere; and that it was left to her to set a bright example of unshaken rectitude, undoubted truth and honourable fame. All that was base or mean, she, from her soul, despised; a fearless spirit raised her, as she fondly imagined, above the vulgar herd; self confident, she scarcely deigned to bow the knee before her God; and man, as she had read of him in history, appeared too weak, too trivial to inspire either alarm or admiration.