philosophers, could without difficulty recal the period, at which, in the elegant language of our poetress, he might himself have addressed his wife when a girl of eleven or twelve years old with these harmonious lines: “When first upon your tender cheek I saw the morn of beauty break With mild and cheering beam, I bow’d before your infant shrine, The earliest sighs you had were mine, And you my darling theme. “I saw you in that opening morn, For beauty’s boundless empire born, And first confess’d your sway; And e’er your thoughts, devoid of art, Could learn the value of a heart, I gave my heart away.” The peculiar circumstances of fortune in which Miss Cowley had been left by Mrs. Dawson’s will, her prospects in life, and above all, the confidence which her father had placed in her principles, strengthened his apprehensions for his son’s future conduct, and the consequences to be expected from so apparent an attachment and sympathy in character, as his vigilant eye detected in the mutual, though childish conversation of a boy and a girl. He communicated his fears to his wife; and the separation which followed, was the tribute which virtue and rectitude exacted from the tender parents. Horace was sent to his maternal uncle’s, to complete his education; and the same year Mrs. Hardcastle commenced her annual visit to London, for three months, in order to give her young charge, then in her twelfth year, the advantages of the first-rate masters in those accomplishments which her fortune rendered necessary. A circle of friends, who, like herself, conceived that no girl beyond the age of infancy could be better placed than in the drawing-room, in a society composed of both sexes, qualified and disposed to be useful to their innocence and improvement, bounded Mrs. Hardcastle’s town amusements, and spared her the lessons necessary to the young candidate for notice, who at a certain age is emancipated from the routine of a school, or a nursery in the attic; or in other words, “brought out” for the gaze of idle curiosity, and to be disposed of to the highest bidder. Rachel Cowley’s introduction to the world was unmarked by any _eclat_ of this kind; and whilst probably she and her friend Lucy were daily acquiring good manners and knowledge, they neither suspected nor thought of the extent of the obligations they were under to those who were forming their minds, and determining their future taste for the enjoyments of _rational_ and responsible beings.