XIll steady a course through all the vicissitudes of prosperity and adversity, as enabled him, though he could neither control the conduct· of his coadjutors, nor stem the fluctuating tides of fortune or popular opinion, yet to preserve for himself not only the great and inexhaustible resource of a good conscience, but eyen the unanimous esteem of the Great Assembly of the Nation, when they agreed in no other thing: he will no doubt be sensible that such a character is rare, but he will perceive such a consistency and harmony of parts as to make him deem the whole easy of belief, and conclude that such an one would be even more difficult to feign than to find: he will hence be lt;d to concur with us in asserting, that it is much more efficacious and conducive to improvement and to the advancement of morality thus to hold forth a great example in real life, and to elicit principle from practice, than first to feign a sentiment, and then actions and events to st1pport it, as has been done both by ancients and moderns, from the Hercules of Prodicus to the Grandison of Richardson. Nor has the ski ll and attention of our author been confined to the pourtraying of her principal character, she has equally succeeded in the delineation of the subordinate ones; · so that whenever their speeches or actions are brought afi·esh before our view, we need not that they should be named in order to recognize the personage ; and both in this department, and in that of the development of the intrigues which she occasionally lays open to us, we shall acknowledge the advantage of her adding to the vigour of a masculine understanding, the nice feeling and discrimination, the delicate touch of the pencil of a female. As to the stile and phraseology, thete are so few prose w1·itings of a prior or coeval date now read, that we should be at a loss to point out any which could have served her for models, or us for a standard of comparison; nor does it so much appear to us to bear the stamp of any particular age, as by its simplicity, significancy, and propriety, to be worthy of imitation in all times. Some ex-
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