He taught her
Latin and English, chiefly that she might understand the sublimity of
their best poets. She discovered in her early years a taste for
works of genius; and it was St. Aubert's principle, as well as his
inclination, to promote every innocent means of happiness. 'A well-
informed mind,' he would say, 'is the best security against the
contagion of folly and of vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch
for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the
languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of
thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be
counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within.
Thought, and cultivation, are necessary equally to the happiness of a
country and a city life; in the first they prevent the uneasy
sensations of indolence, and afford a sublime pleasure in the taste
they create for the beautiful, and the grand; in the latter, they
make dissipation less an object of necessity, and consequently of
interest.'
It was one of Emily's earliest pleasures to ramble among the scenes
of nature; nor was it in the soft and glowing landscape that she most
delighted; she loved more the wild wood-walks, that skirted the
mountain; and still more the mountain's stupendous recesses, where
the silence and grandeur of solitude impressed a sacred awe upon her
heart, and lifted her thoughts to the GOD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH.
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