The Gordons arrived, and Mr. Playfair's portrait was not exaggerated. Much has been said against those sudden and sentimental attachments, to which the female sex is accused of being especially addicted: and we are not desirous of weakening the force of ridicule, which is justly ascribable to vows of eternal friendship made at sight; but there is a sympathy between kindred souls, which, as it will always exist in nature, we may be permitted to hope will escape condemnation, and never be confounded with the transitory illusions of romance. Such a sympathy almost immediately drew Mrs. Gordon and Zorilda to each other, and every day's experience confirmed the mutual attraction. Mr. and Mrs. Gordon inspired the idea of having been shut up in an ark with a chosen band, and "all appliances and means to boot," for preserving every intellectual and social energy in constant play, untainted by the vices or the follies of a surrounding world. It may be imagined by some, who hold a widely extended intercourse with mankind to be requisite to liberal views and enlightened understandings, that such a description must necessarily imply narrow minds, and limited information; but nothing could be more mistaken than such a conclusion. In our present state of civilization, dark and secluded must be that recess into which books and opinions do not find their way, and perhaps it may be truly said of various kinds of knowledge, that it is not unusually found in an inverse proportion with the distance from its source. Whatever may be the truth, as a general remark, the fact was, that in the particular instance with which we are concerned at present, the Scotch visitors who now added to the family circle at Henbury, appeared to Zorilda to be no other than the genii of some more favoured planet, invested with the keys of all those sacred stores from which the best possessions of mankind are derived. Her clear intelligence and brilliant fancy, which had never before "sparkled in collision," now expanded in a congenial atmosphere, and the innocent Zoé was surprised by the powers of comprehension awakened in her mind by the talisman of such society as she enjoyed for the first time in her short life. Mr. Playfair had been a mine of intellect, but the parental interest which he felt for his pupil, induced caution in the encouragement of those quick sensibilities which he foresaw would prove the bane of her happiness. He had therefore always led her to such studies as exercised her reason more than her imagination; and had endeavoured to repress every tendency to excitement in a character of such refined texture and vivid glow, that he dreaded its future contact with a world in which so little would be found in sympathy with its delicate structure. What rapture, was it not natural to think, did Zorilda now experience in meeting with her _beau ideal_ of female friendship in Mrs. Gordon, of whom she became almost a worshipper!