Page:Father's memoirs of his child.djvu/20

 closed. At my first acquaintance with Hafod, it seemed as if I saw, allowing for sex and contingent varieties, the consummation of what I had myself hoped and planned. It was neither in your character nor mine, to consider in a light and fantastic point of view, the duty of forming a tender mind. Elegant and tasteful accomplishments, though highly desirable as appendages to a liberal education, are the garnish, and not the food of life. The music-room and the drawing-academy, the circles of rank and of refinement, may each be allowed their attraction and their interest. The manners of the polite world are chiefly satirised by those, who have been foiled in their endeavours to insinuate themselves within its sphere. But there is a still higher ambition, of founding on the basis of useful and reputable attainments, a rational and equable constitution of the mind: a sense of human instability, to keep down the pride of condition; and sentiments of personal honour, to support its dignity. These, as