The walls of our mansions were beginning to
groan with the sickly green of imaginary fields, that
caricatured the beauties of nature; and skies of
sunny brightness, that mocked the golden hues of
even an American sun. The experience of Miss
Emmerson went no further than the simple
evolutions of the country dance, or the deliberate
and dignified procession of the minuet. No wonder,
therefore, that her faculties were bewildered by the
complex movements of the cotillion: and, in short,
as the good lady daily contemplated the
improvements of the female youth around her, she
became each hour more convinced of her own
inability to control, or in any manner to
superintend, the education of her orphan niece.
Julia was, consequently, entrusted to the
government of a select boarding-school; and, as
even the morals of the day were, in some degree,
tinctured with the existing fashions, her mind as
well as her manners were absolutely submitted to
the discretion of an hireling. Notwithstanding this
willing concession of power on the part of Miss
Emmerson, there was no deficiency in ability to
judge between right and wrong in her character; but
the homely nature of her good sense, unassisted by
any confidence in her own powers, was unable to
compete with the dazzling display of
accomplishments which met her in every house
where she visited; and if she sometimes thought
that she could not always discover much of the
useful amid this excess of the agreeable, she rather
attributed the deficiency to her own ignorance than
to any error in the new system of instruction.
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