After, however, a short pause, I replied with great gravity, that I always conceived with Pliny, that the dignity we possess by the good offices of a friend, is a kind of sacred trust, wherein we have his judgment as well as our own character to maintain, and therefore to be guarded with peculiar attention; that consequently, on his account, I was as anxious as on my own, to confirm the good opinion conceived in my favour through the medium of his partiality; and with very great sincerity I assured him, that I knew of no one event so coincident to my present views of happiness, as the power of making the Prince some return for his benevolent attentions, and of becoming his (the priest’s) coadjutor in the tuition of his highly gifted pupil.
“Add then, my dear Sir,” said I, “to all the obligations you have forced on me, by presenting my respectful compliments to the Prince, with the offer of my little services, and an earnest request that he will condescend to accept of them; and if you think it will add to the delicacy of the offer, let him suppose that it voluntarily comes from the heart deeply impressed with a sense of his kindness.”
“That is precisely what I was going to propose,” returned this excellent and unsuspecting being. “I would even wish him to think you conceive the obligation all on your own side; for the pride of fallen greatness is of all others the most sensitive.”
“And God knows so I do,” said I, fervently,—then carelessly added, “do you think your pupil has a decided talent for the art?”
“It may be partiality,” he replied; “but I think she has a decided talent for every elegant acquirement. If I recollect right, somebody has defined genius to be ‘the various powers of a strong mind directed to one point:’ making it the result of combined force, not the vital source, whence all intellectual powers flow; in which light, the genius of Glorvina has ever appeared to me as a beam from heaven, an emanation of divine intelligence, whose nutritive warmth cherishes into existence that richness and variety of talent which wants only a little care to rear it to perfection.
“When I first offered to become the preceptor to this charming child, her father, I believe, never formed an idea that my tuition would have extended beyond a little reading and writing; but I soon found that my interesting pupil possessed a genius that bore all before it—that almost anticipated instruction by force of its tuitive powers, and prized each task assigned it, only in proportion to the difficulty by which it was to be accomplished.
“Her young ambitious mind even emulated rivalry with mine, and that study in which she beheld me engaged seldom failed to become the object of her desires and her assiduity. Availing myself, therefore, of this innate spirit of emulation—this boundless thirst of knowledge, I left her mind free in the election of its studies, while I only threw within its power of acquisition, that which could tend to render her a rational, and consequently a benevolent being; for I have always conceived an informed, intelligent, and enlightened mind, to be the best security for a good heart; although the many who mistake talent for intellect, and unfortunately too often find the former united to vice, and led to suppose that the heart loses in goodness what the mind acquires in strength, as if (as a certain paradoxical writer has asserted) there was something in the natural mechanism of the human frame necessary to constitute a fine genius that is not altogether favourable to the heart.
“But here comes the unconscious theme of our conversation.”
And at that moment Glorvina appeared, springing lightly forward, like Gresset’s beautiful personification of health:
“As Hebe swift, as Venus fair,