Miss Templeton had some excellent notions respecting education. Implicit obedience, deference, perfect truthfulness and active industry were, in her opinion, essential points; and as these requisites have become so obsolete as to have quite gone into disuse in modern systems of instruction, it may be judged how entirely the old lady had fallen behind the march of intellect. Her affection awakened some of the dormant energy of her character, and she applied herself diligently to the task of training and disciplining the mind of her young charge. In this, as in most other cases, usefulness brought its own blessing along with it, and, as the child increased in knowledge, the heart of the recluse seemed to expand to a wider circle of sympathies. It was, indeed, a pleasant thing to see the frost of so many winters melting away before the sunshine of childish happiness, and it may be questioned whether Miss Templeton or Hester derived the most benefit from this close connection between them. But character in its earliest development is very chameleon-like, and takes its hue from the objects with which it is brought directly in contact. Miss Templeton educated Hester thoroughly and usefully; she imparted to her a stock of knowledge far beyond that acquired at the most of schools, she imbued her with noble principles and an accurate sense of duty, but she also endowed her, unconsciously and involuntarily it may be, with her own high-toned and romantic sentiments. Indeed, it was impossible for a sensitive child to live within the atmosphere of romance and not imbibe its spirit. The circumstances of Miss Templeton’s life, her unselfish devotion to the memory of the dead, her reverential love for him who had lain so many years within the tomb, her scrupulous adherence to a vow made in the first anguish of a wounded spirit, her quiet sufferance of a blighted heart during a long life, all were calculated to make a deep impression on the mind of a girl whose sensibilities were already morbidly acute. The unlimited range of her reading, too, tended to confirm such impressions. With that respect for every thing which bears the semblance of a printed volume, so characteristic of a bookworm, Miss Templeton had carefully preserved an extensive but very miscellaneous library. The poets and essayists of England’s golden age were ranged side by side with the controversial theologists—sermons were elbowed by cookery books—Sir Charles Grandison was a close neighbor to the grave Sherlock—while Clarissa Harlowe and Pamela were in curious juxtaposition with the excellent Jeremy Taylor and Richard Baxter. Novels and romances formed no small part of this heterogeneous collection, and Hester, who was a most inveterate reader, devoured every work of fiction which came in her way. To the present generation, who have become fastidious from literary indulgence, and who, since the days of Edgeworth and Scott, ask for