Innocent in her isolation, almost infantine in her natural simplicity, a
single enjoyment was sufficient to satisfy all the passions of her age.
Father, mother, lover, and companion; liberties, amusements, and
adornments--they were all summed up for her in that simple lute. The
archness, the liveliness, and the gentleness of her disposition; the
poetry of her nature, and the affection of her heart; the happy bloom of
youth, which seclusion could not all wither nor distorted precept taint,
were now entirely nourished, expanded, and freshened--such is the
creative power of human emotion--by that inestimable possession. She
could speak to it, smile on it, caress it, and believe, in the ecstasy
of her delight, in the carelessness of her self-delusion, that it
sympathised with her joy. During her long solitudes, when she was
silently watched in her father's absence by the brooding, melancholy
stranger whom he had set over her, it became a companion dearer than the
flower-garden, dearer even that the plains and mountains which formed
her favourite view.
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