taste was observable. The modern, however beautiful in design or execution, had little power to fix her attention; while the grand, the ancient, the romantic, seized upon her imagination with irresistible power. The sanctity of time seemed, to her mind, to give a sublimity to the simplest objects; and whatever was connected with great events in history, or with the lapse of ages long gone by, riveted and absorbed every faculty of her mind. During our visit to the nunneries she said but little, and seemed abstracted in thought, as if, as she herself so beautifully expresses it, to
The faded forms of other days.'
"She had an opportunity of viewing an elegant collection of paintings. She seemed in ecstasies all the evening, and every feature beamed with joy." The writer, after proceeding to give an account of her surprising success in attempts at pencil-sketches from Nature, expresses his delight and amazement at the attainments of this girl of fourteen years in general literature, and at the independence and originality of mind that resisted the subduing, and, if I may be allowed the expression, the subordinating effect of this early intimacy with captivating models. A marvelous resistance, if we take into the account "that timid, retiring modesty," which, as the writer of the letter says, "marked her even to painful excess." Lucretia returned to her mother with renovated health, and her mind bright with new impressions and joyous emotions.
