But from the natural impatience and volatility of her character, (both very obvious,) this, thank Heaven! will soon be over. Besides, even in the hour of tuition, from which I promised myself so much, I do not enjoy her society--the priest always devotes that time to reading out to her; and this too at her own request:--not that I think her innocent and unsuspicious nature cherishes the least reserve at her being left _tete-a-tete_ with her less venerable preceptor; but that her ever active mind requires incessant exercise; and in fact, while I am hanging over her in uncontrolled emotion, she is drawing, as if her livelihood depended on the exertions of her pencil, or commenting on the subjects of the priest’s perusal, with as much ease as judgment; while she minds me no more than if I were a well organized piece of mechanism, by whose motions her pencil was to be guided.
What if, with all her mind, all her genius, this creature had no heart!--And what were it to me, though she had?------
The Prince fancies his domestic government to be purely patriarchal, and that he is at once the “Law and the Prophet” to his family; never suspecting that he is all the time governed by a girl of nineteen, whose soul, notwithstanding the playful softness of her manner, contains a latent ambition, which sometimes breathing in the grandeur of her sentiment, and sometimes sparkling in the haughtiness of her eye, seems to say, “I was born for empire!”
It is evident that the tone of her mind is naturally stronger than her father’s, though to a common observe, _he_ would appeal a man of nervous and masculine understanding; but the difference between them is this--his energies are the energies of the passions--hers of the mind!
Like most other Princes, _mine_ is governed much by _favoritism_; and it is evident I already rank high on the list of partiality.
I perceive, however, that much of his predilection in my favour, arises from the coincidence of my present curiosity and taste with his favourite pursuits and national prejudices. Newly awakened, (perhaps by mere force of novelty,) to a lively interest for every thing that concerns a country I once thought so little worthy of consideration; in short, convinced by the analogy of existing habits, with recorded customs, of the truth of those circumstances so generally ranked in the apocryphal tales of the history of this vilified country; I have determined to resort to the witness of time, the light of truth, and the corroboration of living testimony, in the study of a country which I am beginning to think would afford to the mind of philosophy a rich subject of analysis, and to the powers of poetic fancy a splendid series of romantic detail.