still the importunate suggestions of your sensibility; preserve your sincerity, cherish the ingenuous warmth of unsophisticated feeling, but let discernment precede confidence. I tremble even for the excess of those virtues which I have laboured to cultivate in your lively and docile mind. If I could form a wish for longer life, it is only for my children, and that I might be to my Emma instead of reason, till her own stronger mind matures. I dread, lest the illusions of imagination should render those powers, which would give force to truth and virtue, the auxiliaries of passion. Learn to distinguish, with accuracy, the good and ill qualities of those with whom you may mingle: while you abhor the latter, separate the being from his errors; and while you revere the former, the moment that your reverence becomes personal, that moment, suspect that your judgment is in danger of becoming the dupe of your affections.'

Would to God that I had impressed upon my mind—that I had recalled to my remembrance more frequently—a lesson so important to a disposition like mine!—a continual victim to the enthusiasm of my feelings; incapable of approving, or disapproving, with moderation—the most poignant sufferings, even the study of mankind, have been insufficient to dissolve the powerful enchantment, to disentangle the close-twisted associations!—But I check this train of overwhelming reflection, that is every moment on the point of breaking the thread of my narration, and obtruding itself to my pen.

CHAPTER X

Mr Courtney did not long survive the guardian of my infancy:—his constitution had for some years been gradually impaired; and his death was hastened by a continuance of habitual dissipation, which he had not the resolution to relinquish, and to which his strength was no longer equal. It was an event I had long anticipated, and which I contemplated with a sensation of solemnity, rather than of grief. The ties of blood are weak, if not the mere chimeras of prejudice, unless sanctioned by reason, or cemented by habits of familiar and affectionate intercourse. Mr Courtney refusing the title of father, from a conviction that his conduct gave him no claim to this endearing appellation, had accustomed me to feel for him only the respect due to some talents and good qualities, which threw a veil over his faults. Courage and truth were the principles with which he endeavoured to inspire me;—precepts, which I gratefully acknowledge, and which forbid me to adopt the language of affection, when no responsive sympathies exist in the heart.

My eyes were yet moist with the 

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