Page:Women worth emulating (1877) Internet Archive.djvu/98

82 reader; and it is probable, as the bar has always been considered a school of oratory, that this, in the first place, both excited her attention and induced her father to permit her to gratify her wish of attending the trials.

Some years after, a near relative of hers became one of our most eminent judges—Baron Alderson—which must have been a great gratification to such a lover of forensic eloquence and legal distinction as was our heroine from her youth up.

Naturally, a young lady so much her own mistress and so admired, mingling in the most fashionable circles of a gay and wealthy city, would early receive those attentions which some young girls think the crowning distinction of early womanhood. But with all her warmth of feeling and fancy. Miss Alderson was not one of those young ladies who think it inevitable that, as soon as they are grown up, they should fall in love. She loved her father so fondly that she wished to devote her life to him; and so her first youth passed away, and left her

She had paid many visits to London, and was known as a writer of great promise before her heart was troubled, or blessed, with any emotion that equalled her filial love.

In the year 1781–2, there was in London an artist, whose genius excited the utmost admiration, not unmingled with surprise, named Opie, who had been