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Rh Beneath the pale surface of these sentences, and of one touching "that joyous birdlike enjoyment of things which, though perishable as to their actual existence, will be embalmed to eternity in the precious spices of gratitude," there are germs of sentiments to which the writer clung through the coming years. But the contrast with her developed character is stronger than the resemblance. She is struck at this time with compassion at the spectacle presented by people who go on marrying and giving in marriage. Music seems to her an unholy rite. On a visit to London she buys a Josephus, but refuses to go to the play with her brother. Even Shakespeare is dangerous. She lamented that novels had been supplied to her early, teaching her to live by herself in the midst of an imaginary world ; and she had been disturbed at reading in Devereux that religion is not a requisite to moral excellence. She concluded that history is better than fiction ; and her growing energy, her accuracy, her power of mastering hard books, seemed to promise a rival to Clinton or Long. The first literary enterprise in which she was engaged was a chart of ecclesiastical history, intended to include an application of the Apocalyptic prophecies, "which would merely require a few figures," — the sense of humour was still dormant. The taste for material erudition was soon lost, and turned to bitterness. In her books George Eliot has twice exhibited the vanity of pointless learning, and she looked back gratefully upon the agencies which rescued her from the devious and rugged ways by which history approaches truth.

Evangelical and Baptist teachers had imbued her with practical religion, and she enjoyed the writings proper to the school. In after-years Sydney Smith's account of his occupations about this time must have seemed to her a burlesque of her own : "I console myself with Doddridge's Exposition and The Scholar Armed, to say nothing of a very popular book, The Dissenter Tripped