This was the case in the family of the Holmes. Miss Emma was a beautiful girl. Her manners were exceedingly graceful. She was witty and satirical in her disposition, and from her childhood gave unequivocal proofs that she required more than ordinary attention in the cultivation of her mind and the formation of her character. From the superior vivacity of her spirits, the playfulness of her fancy, and her intellectual acuteness, she gained a powerful ascendency over the affections of her parents, who, trusting too much to the maturity of her judgment for the correction of budding ills, paid less regard to the formation of her habits than they had done with their other children. The partiality for dress, which she discovered when a child, increased as she grew up, till at length she lavished nearly the whole of her attention on her external appearance. After having spent a few years in the establishment where her elder sisters had finished their education, she was sent, at the age of sixteen, to a fashionable boarding-school, in which too much attention was paid to mere personal graces and accomplishments. It was here that she formed an intimacy with the daughter of Colonel Orme, who resided near the Elms, and which proved a source of poignant sorrow to all the members of her family. After leaving school, she was permitted by her unsuspecting parents to exchange visits with her young friend, who was, by the influence of her sentiments and example, gradually destroying that reverence for the authority of religion, and that attachment to its practices, which they were so anxious to cherish and to strengthen. Miss Holmes saw with deep regret the fatal bias which her sister's mind was receiving; and though she availed herself of every opportunity which circumstances offered to check and subdue it, yet she constantly met with determined resistance. "Indeed," said Emma, after her sister had been urging her to return some novels which her friend had sent for her perusal, "I shall not do it till I have read them. They are amusing and interesting; and if they contain any objectionable sentiments, I can easily reject them." "Yes, they may amuse and may interest, but they will not improve your mind. They will give you false views of nature and the world--imperceptibly reconcile you to sentiments and opinions at which you would now shudder--induce such a love for the marvellous and romantic that you will be dissatisfied with the dull uniformity of life, and destroy all the religious impressions which our dear parents have been so anxious to produce." "When I feel the injury to which you allude I will give them up, but till then you must permit me to follow my own inclination without control. I am old enough to judge for myself."