cannot say with what passion I loved every thing even the inanimate
objects that surrounded me. I believe that I bore an individual
attachment to every tree in our park; every animal that inhabited it
knew me and I loved them. Their occasional deaths filled my infant
heart with anguish. I cannot number the birds that I have saved during
the long and severe winters of that climate; or the hares and rabbits
that I have defended from the attacks of our dogs, or have nursed when
accidentally wounded.

When I was seven years of age my nurse left me. I now forget the cause
of her departure if indeed I ever knew it. She returned to England,
and the bitter tears she shed at parting were the last I saw flow for
love of me for many years. My grief was terrible: I had no friend but
her in the whole world. By degrees I became reconciled to solitude but
no one supplied her place in my affections. I lived in a desolate
country where

------ there were none to praise
And very few to love.[A]

It is true that I now saw a little more of my aunt, but she was in
every way an unsocial being; and to a timid child she was as a plant
beneath a thick covering of ice; I should cut my hands in endeavouring
to get at it. So I was entirely thrown upon my own resourses. The
neighbouring minister was engaged to give me lessons in reading,
writing and french, but he was without family and his manners even to
me were always perfectly characteristic of the profession in the
exercise of whose functions he chiefly shone, that of a schoolmaster.
I sometimes strove to form friendships with the most attractive of the
girls who inhabited the neighbouring village; but I believe I should