Mr. Henderson not knowing what means he might have to provide for his family, very wisely gave them as good an education as was in his power; and at the same time, in order to have that education for them all as cheap as possible, it was his plan that the elder should teach the younger, that she might be thus partly prepared, should need be, to undertake with a greater stock of experience the task of instructing others. The young lady took instruction kindly and well. Her progress in every thing was really astonishing. Her music-master, her drawing-master, her French-master, never had such a pupil in the whole course of their experience. Masters say the same of all their pupils who are not paragons of stupidity. But in this instance there really was somewhat more truth in the commendations than is usually the case. Mr. Henderson was of course highly delighted with his daughter's talents. Mrs. Henderson was lavish in her praise of them, and profuse in her exhibition of them. The young lady was puffed into a mighty conceit of herself, and she very kindly pitied the ignorance and incapacity of the great mass of mankind. The young lady and her father and mother were not aware, that it was to a constitution of mind by no means enviable or desirable, that Miss Henderson was indebted for the great rapidity of her progress and the multitude of her acquirements. There were two causes of that progress; one was a prodigious share of vanity which would undergo any exertion or painful application in order to gratify itself; and the other was a total want of all power of imagination or principle of original and investigating thought, so that there was nothing to interfere with an undivided and close attention to any object of pursuit. The natural result of acquiring knowledge on these principles and from these causes was, that the knowledge was at last and best the mere lumber of memory, and the theme of vain prate and idle boasting, it was not food for the mind, it was not digested. There was scarcely a piece of music which Miss Henderson could not play at sight; but her style of playing was such as to weary rather than to fascinate; and to listen to the young lady's mechanical dexterity on the piano-forte, was called undergoing one of Miss Henderson's sonatas. There was the same hardness and absence of poetry also in her paintings. The outline was very correct, the colouring was accurate, the transcript complete, but there was no life in the living, no animation in the scenery. There was a provoking likeness in the portraits which she sometimes drew of her friends; and so proud was she of her skill in portrait-painting, that few of her acquaintance could keep their countenances safe from the harsh and wooden mockery of her pencil. Deriving a rich gratification to her vanity from her various accomplishments and miscellaneous acquirements, she fancied that her greatest happiness was in the pursuit of knowledge and the pleasures of science.