Fanny had no pleasure in reading, but she had a pride in having read; and listened, with no small satisfaction, to her mother's detail of the authors she was conversant with; beyond her age, and, as some untalented ventured to suggest, not always suited to her years of innocence. The arcana of their pages were safe, however, and quite guiltless of her mind's corruption. Fanny never thought, whatever she might read; what was in the book, was nothing to her; all her business was to _have_ read it. Meantime, while the powers he had not were solicited in vain, the talents she had were neglected and suppressed. Her good-humored enjoyment of ordinary things, her real taste for domestic arrangement, and open simplicity of heart, were derided as vulgar and unintellectual. Her talent for music was thought not worth cultivating; time could not be spared. Some little capacity she had for drawing, as an imitative art, was baffled by the determination to teach it her scientifically, thus rendering it as impossible as every thing else. In short--for why need I prolong my sketch?--Fanny was prepared by nature to be the _beau ideal_ of Mrs. W.'s amiable woman. Constitutionally active and benevolent, judicious culture might have made her sensible, and, in common life, intelligent, pleasing, useful, happy. Nay, I need only refer to the picture of my former paper, to say what Fanny, well educated, was calculated to become. But this was what her parents were determined she should not be; and they spent twenty years, and no small amount of cash, to make her a woman of superior mind and distinguished literary attainments. I saw the result; for I saw Fanny at twenty, the most unlovely, useless, and unhappy being I ever met with. The very docility of a mind, not strong enough to choose its own part, and resist the influence of circumstances, hastened forward the catastrophe. She had learned to think herself what she could not be, and to despise what in reality she was; she could not otherwise than do so, for she had been imbued with it from her cradle. She was accustomed from her infancy to intellectual society; kept up to listen, when she should have been in bed; she counted the spots on the carpet, heard nothing that was said, and prided herself on being one of such company. A little later, she was encouraged to talk to every body, and give her opinion upon every thing, in order to improve and exercise her mind. Her mind remained unexercised, because she talked without thinking; but she learned to chatter, to repeat other people's opinions, and fancy her own were of immense importance.