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vades all her compositions ., whether they be long or short , poetry or prose , narrative or didactic ; she seldom writes any thing in which its influence is not traceable . She has as keen an eye for virtue , or that which may become so , as the policeman has for a thief . She will ferret out something good in the darkest den , or on the dreariest moor . She has an instinct for it . However
latent in the object , a sense of its presence is sure to come over her . And then how she delights to elicit , and develope , and describe it ; cherishing it all the more for the bad company in which it was found . The quick and strong perception by the individual , of something the presence of which others do not apprehend , is frequently the result of an aversion . In her it is a sympathy . She institutes no search , she starts no chase for her
own gratification , she seeks no display of ingenuity ; but wherever the good exists , an elective affinity between it and the tendencies of her own moral constitution immediately manifests itself . This peculiarity seems to us an honourable and a beautiful one in itself , and one which should operate as a recommendation of her writings . It should do so the more strongly , as she often writes for the young ; and those of her works which were not especially
intended for them , are still admirably calculated to engage their attention , and advance their improvement . Few better things can be desired for them than a similar love of goodness , and a similar promptness and universality in the perception of its existence . The times in which we live are too antagonistic for the uninterrupted enjoyment of either natural or moral beauty ; we are too apt , like old soldiers , to look at hill and valley with a military eye ,
and to be marking out imaginary redoubts , till we neither see the beauty of the forms which are before our eyes , nor smell the sweetness of the fragrance which is floating in the atmosphere around us . We are fighting for good rather than enjoying it ; and they deserve thanks who keep alive through the conflict the capacity for pleasure , which might else wither before the attain * ment of the possession .
And Miss Taylor is right ; she has the truth with her ; the good which she perceives really is in man and in nature : it is scattered abroad over the world , and ought not to be heedlessly trampled under foot . She does not create , she only discovers . The eyes of Gertrude were said * to love whate v er they looked upon . ' That was by reflection . Her own overflowing love was sent back to her from any and every object on which it fell . It
was only her own quality that she seemed to perceive inherent in all things else as their attribute . But Miss Taylor has a different species of perception from this . It is not that she loves what she sees in every thing , but she sees what she loves in every thing . It is , as we said , a sympathy between the world within and that without , and not a reflection merely of the world within back from the world without . Her moral sense is too pure and fine to
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814 Tales of the English .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1833, page 814, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2628/page/10/
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