charming faces, placed within the petticoat, swelled by the wind, recalled
to my mind the children of Leda, enclosed within the same shell.

"Their sole study was how to please and assist each other; for of all other
things they were ignorant, and knew neither how to read nor write. They
were never disturbed by researches into past times, nor did their curiosity
extend beyond the bounds of that mountain. They believed the world ended at
the shores of their own island, and all their ideas and affections were
confined within its limits. Their mutual tenderness, and that of their
mothers, employed all the activity of their souls. Their tears had never
been called forth by long application to useless sciences. Their minds had
never been wearied by lessons of morality, superfluous to bosoms
unconscious of ill. They had never been taught that they must not steal,
because every thing with them was in common; or be intemperate, because
their simple food was left to their own discretion; or false, because they
had no truth to conceal. Their young imaginations had never been terrified
by the idea that God has punishments in store for ungrateful children,
since with them filial affection arose naturally from maternal fondness.
All they had been taught of religion was to love it; and if they did not
offer up long prayers in the church, wherever they were, in the house, in
the fields, in the woods, they raised towards heaven their innocent hands,
and their hearts purified by virtuous affections.

"Thus passed their early childhood, like a beautiful dawn, the prelude of a
bright day. Already they partook with their mothers the cares of the
household. As soon as the cry of the wakeful cock announced the first beam
of the morning, Virginia arose, and hastened to draw water from a
neighbouring spring; then returning to the house, she prepared the
breakfast. When the rising sun lighted up the points of those rocks which
overhang this enclosure, Margaret and her child went to the dwelling of