me's nature--the mainspring of her motives--the alpha and omega of
her life. I have seen her _feelings_ appealed to, and I have smiled in
half-pity, half-scorn at the appellants. None ever gained her ear
through that channel, or swayed her purpose by that means. On the
contrary, to attempt to touch her heart was the surest way to rouse her
antipathy, and to make of her a secret foe. It proved to her that she
had no heart to be touched: it reminded her where she was impotent and
dead. Never was the distinction between charity and mercy better
exemplified than in her. While devoid of sympathy, she had a sufficiency
of rational benevolence: she would give in the readiest manner to people
she had never seen--rather, however, to classes than to individuals.
"Pour les pauvres" she opened her purse freely--against the _poor man_,
as a rule, she kept it closed. In philanthropic schemes, for the benefit
of society at large, she took a cheerful part; no private sorrow touched
her: no force or mass of suffering concentrated in one heart had power
to pierce hers. Not the agony of Gethsemane, not the death on Calvary,
could have wrung from her eyes one tear.

I say again, madame was a very great and a very capable woman. That
school offered for her powers too limited a sphere: she ought to have
swayed a nation; she should have been the leader of a turbulent
legislative assembly. Nobody could have browbeaten her, none irritated
her nerves, exhausted her patience, or overreached her astuteness. In
her own single person, she could have comprised the duties of a first
minister and a superintendent of police. Wise, firm, faithless, secret,
crafty, passionless; watchful and inscrutable; acute and
insensate--withal perfectly decorous--what more could be desired?

A YORKSHIRE LANDSCAPE

From 'Shirley'

"Miss Keeldar, just stand still now, and look down at Nunneley dale and
wood."

They both halted on the green brow of the Common. They looked down on
the deep valley robed in May raiment; on varied meads, some pearled with
daisies and some golden with kingcups: to-day all this young verdure
smiled clear in sunlight; transparent emerald and amber gleams played
over it. On Nunnwood--the sole remnant of antique British forest in a
region whose lowlands were once all sylvan chase, as its highlands were
breast-deep heather--slept the shadow of a cloud; the distant hills were
dappled, the horizon was shaded and tinted like mother-of-pe