Page:The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld volume 1.djvu/22

 great beauty, distinct traces of which she retained to the latest period of life. Her person was slender, her complexion exquisitely fair, with the bloom of perfect health; her features were regular and elegant, and her dark blue eyes beamed with the light of wit and fancy.

A solitary education had not produced on her its most frequent ill effects, pride and self-importance: the reserve of her manners proceeded solely from bashfulness, for her temper inclined her strongly to friendship and to social pleasures; and her active imagination, which represented all objects tinged with hues "unborrowed of the sun," served as a charm against that disgust with common characters and daily incidents, which so frequently renders the conscious possessor of superior talents at once unamiable and unhappy. Nor was she now in want of congenial associates. Warrington academy included among its tutors names eminent both in science and