of the Moral Sentiments. I, however, went on, exulting in my strength.
Glencoe supplied me with books, and I devoured them with appetite, if not
digestion. We walked and talked together under the trees before the house,
or sat apart, like Milton's angels, and held high converse upon themes
beyond the grasp of ordinary intellects. Glencoe possessed a kind of
philosophic chivalry, in imitation of the old peripatetic sages, and was
continually dreaming of romantic enterprises in morals, and splendid
systems for the improvement of society. He had a fanciful mode of
illustrating abstract subjects, peculiarly to my taste; clothing them with
the language of poetry, and throwing round them almost the magic hues of
fiction. "How charming," thought I, "is divine philosophy;" not harsh and
crabbed, as dull fools suppose,

"But a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns."

I felt a wonderful self-complacency at being on such excellent terms with a
man whom I considered on a parallel with the sages of antiquity, and looked
down with a sentiment of pity on the feebler intellects of my sisters, who
could comprehend nothing of metaphysics. It is true, when I attempted to
study them by myself, I was apt to get in a fog; but when Glencoe came to
my aid, everything was soon as clear to me as day. My ear drank in the
beauty of his words; my imagination was dazzled with the splendor of his
illustrations. It caught up the sparkling sands of poetry that glittered
through his speculations, and mistook them for the golden ore of wisdom.
Struck with the facility with which I seemed to imbibe and relish the most
abstract doctrines, I conceived a still higher opinion of my mental powers,
and was convinced that I also was a philosopher.

* * * * *