Note 1 — LETTER LIX.
Reading edition
One of these volumes chancing to lie on the table near me, I looked into it, and found it to be ‘Stepping Heavenward;’—as far as I could make out, a somewhat long, but not unintelligent, sermon on the text of Wordsworth’s ‘Stepping Westward.’ In the five minutes during which I strayed between the leaves of it, and left the talk of my friend with her nurse to its own liberty, I found that the first chapters described the conversion of an idle and careless young lady of sixteen to a solemn view of her duties in life, which she thus expresses at the end of an advanced chapter: “I am resolved never to read worldly books any more; and my music and drawing I have laid aside for ever.”1