The little labours in which she had been employed obviously showed a natural taste, which required only cultivation.

Her father had taught her French and Italian, and a few of the ordinary authors in those languages ornamented her shelves.

He had endeavoured also to be her preceptor in music; but as he began with the more abstruse doctrines of the science, and was not perhaps master of them himself, she had made no proficiency farther than to be able to accompany her voice with the harpsichord; but even this was not very common in Scotland at that period.

To make amends, she sung with great taste and feeling, and with a respect to the sense of what she uttered that might be proposed in example to ladies of much superior musical talent.

Her natural good sense taught her that, if, as we are assured by high authority, music be 'married to immortal verse,' they are very often divorced by the performer in a most shameful manner.