pleasures of the imagination; but I have seldom been right in aligning
to them their proportionate value, but by dint of persevering
examination, and the change and correction of my first opinions.

What I wanted in this respect, Mary possessed, in a degree superior to
any other person I ever knew. The strength of her mind lay in intuition.
She was often right, by this means only, in matters of mere speculation.
Her religion, her philosophy, (in both of which the errors were
comparatively few, and the strain dignified and generous) were, as I
have already said, the pure result of feeling and taste. She adopted one
opinion, and rejected another, spontaneously, by a sort of tact, and the
force of a cultivated imagination; and yet, though perhaps, in the
strict sense of the term, she reasoned little, it is surprising what a
degree of soundness is to be found in her determinations. But, if this
quality was of use to her in topics that seem the proper province of
reasoning, it was much more so in matters directly appealing to the
intellectual taste. In a robust and unwavering judgment of this sort,
there is a kind of witchcraft; when it decides justly, it produces a
responsive vibration in every ingenuous mind. In this sense, my
oscillation and scepticism were fixed by her boldness. When a true
opinion emanated in this way from another mind, the conviction produced
in my own assumed a similar character, instantaneous and firm. This
species of intellect probably differs from the other, chiefly in the
relation of earlier and later. What the one perceives instantaneously
(circumstances having produced in it, either a premature attention to
objects of this sort, or a greater boldness of decision) the other
receives only by degrees. What it wants, seems to be nothing more than a
minute attention to first impressions, and a just appreciation of them;
habits that are never so effectually generated, as by the daily
recurrence of a striking example.