My uncle, who was a man of narrow understanding and illiberal education, was a little disgusted with me for employing so much of my time in reading but still more so, when happening to examine my books, he found, by the titles, that some of them were what he called blasphemy, and tended, as he imagined, to make me me an atheist. When the first transports of my grief were abated, I found myself in an easy situation, and from the natural cheerfulness of my temper, I was beginning once more to taste of happiness. In this distress, a brother of my mother's, who was grown rich in trade, received me into his house, and declared he would take the same care of me as if I had been his own. His income was only for life, and he had rather lived beyond than within it consequently, there was nothing left for me, but the pride and helplessness of genteel life, a taste for every thing elegant, and a delicacy and sensibility that has doubled my sufferings. As I had no very turbulent passions, a ductile and good disposition, and the highest reverence for his understanding, as well as the tenderest affection for him, he found it an easy talk to make me adopt every sentiment and opinion which he proposed to me, as his own, especially as he took care to support his principles by the authority and arguments of the best writers against Christianity.Īt the age of twenty, I was called upon to make use of all the philosophy I had been taught, by his death which not only deprived me of a parent I most ardently loved, but with him of all the ease and affluence to which I had been accustomed. My father, indeed, when I urged him upon that subject, always intimated that the doctrine of immortality, whether true or false, ought not at all to influence my conduct, or interrupt my peace, because the virtue which secured happiness in the present state, would also secure it in a future state: a future state, therefore, I wholly disregarded, and, to confess the truth, disbelieved: for I thought I could plainly discover, that it was disbelieved by my father, though he had not thought fit explicitly to declare his sentiments. I was not led to consider a future state either with hope or fear. As I was urged to chuse virtue and reject vice, from motives which had no necessary connection with immortality. He therefore laboured with great application to inculcate in me the love of order, the beauty of moral rectitude, and the happiness and self-reward of virtue but, at the same time, professed it his design to free my mind from vulgar prejudices and superstition, for so he called revealed religion. But whatever fashionable frailties he might formerly have allowed in himself, he was now in advanced life, and had, at least, worldly wisdom enough to know, that it was necessary his daughter should be restrained from those liberties, which he had looked upon as trifling errors in his own conduct. In his youth he had been a free liver, and, perhaps, for that reason took some pains to become a free thinker. He was a man of sense, with a tolerable share of learning. My mother died when I was but twelve years old, and my father, who was excessively fond of me, determined to be himself my preceptor, and to take care that my natural genius, which his partiality made him think above the common rank, should not want the improvements of a liberal education. I am the daughter of a gentleman of good family, who, as he was a younger brother, purchased, with the portion that was allotted him, a genteel post under government. Says Fidelia, I shall make no apology for the trouble I am about to give you, since I am sure the motives that induce me to give it will have as much weight with you as they have with me I shall, therefore, without farther preface, relate to you the events of a life, which, however insignificant and unentertaining, affords a lesson of the highest importance a lesson, the value of which I have experienced, and may therefore recommend.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |