Constant attendance during many years on a dying and
beloved mother, and her deeply religious feelings, had first broken, and
then controlled, a spirit which nature had intended to be arrogant and
haughty. Her father she adored; and she seemed to devote to him all
that consideration which, with more common characters, is generally
distributed among their acquaintance. We hint at her faults. How
shall we describe her virtues? Her unbounded generosity, her dignified
simplicity, her graceful frankness, her true nobility of thought and
feeling, her firmness, her courage and her truth, her kindness to
her inferiors, her constant charity, her devotion to her parents, her
sympathy with sorrow, her detestation of oppression, her pure unsullied
thoughts, her delicate taste, her deep religion. All these combined
would have formed a delightful character, even if unaccompanied with
such brilliant talents and such brilliant beauty. Accustomed from an
early age to the converse of courts and the forms of the most polished
circles, her manner became her blood, her beauty, and her mind. Yet
she rather acted in unison with the spirit of society than obeyed its
minutest decree.
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