little humbug, I should think, would be the mildest.  Why, child!  I’ve neither time nor inclination to reflect on your faults when you are so far from me, and when, besides, kind letters and presents, and so forth, are continually bringing forth your goodness in the most prominent light.  Then, too, there are judicious relations always round you, who can much better discharge that unpleasant office.  I have no doubt their advice is completely at your service; why then should I intrude mine?  If you will not hear them, it will be vain though one should rise from the dead to instruct you.  Let us have no more nonsense, if you love me.  Mr. —–­ is going to be married, is he?  Well, his wife elect appeared to me to be a clever and amiable lady, as far as I could judge from the little I saw of her, and from your account.  Now to that flattering sentence must I tack on a list of her faults?  You say it is in contemplation for you to leave —–.  I am sorry for it. —–­ is a pleasant spot, one of the old family halls of England, surrounded by lawn and woodland, speaking of past times, and suggesting (to me at least) happy feelings.  M. thought you grown less, did she?  I am not grown a bit, but as short and dumpy as ever.  You ask me to recommend you some books for your perusal.  I will do so in as few words as I can.  If you like poetry, let it be first-rate; Milton, Shakspeare, Thomson, Goldsmith, Pope (if you will, though I don’t admire him), Scott, Byron, Campbell, Wordsworth, and Southey.  Now don’t be startled at the names of Shakspeare and Byron.  Both these were great men, and their works are like themselves.  You will know how to choose the good, and to avoid the evil; the finest passages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting; you will never wish to read them over twice.  Omit the comedies of Shakspeare, and the Don Juan, perhaps the Cain, of Byron, though the latter is a magnificent poem, and read the rest fearlessly; that must indeed be a depraved mind which can gather evil from Henry VIII., from Richard III., from Macbeth, and Hamlet, and Julius Caesar.  Scott’s sweet, wild, romantic poetry can do you no harm.  Nor can Wordsworth’s, nor Campbell’s, nor Southey’s—­the greatest part at least of his; some is certainly objectionable.  For history, read Hume, Rollin, and the Universal History, if you can; I never did.  For fiction, read Scott alone; all novels after his are worthless.  For biography, read Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Southey’s Life of Nelson, Lockhart’s Life of Burns, Moore’s Life of Sheridan, Moore’s Life of Byron, Wolfe’s Remains.  For natural history, read Bewick and Audubon, and Goldsmith and White’s history of Selborne.  For divinity, your brother will advise you there.  I can only say, adhere to standard authors, and avoid novelty.”

From this list, we see that she must have had a good range of books from which to choose her own reading.