pitiful
ambition of making conquests, which is the curse of half the sex, it was
impossible to meet with. But she was to blame for it too, in another
way; for to know her, and not love her, would have been a reproach to
any man. Lively and good-humoured, with an unaffected buoyancy of
spirits, interesting herself in all that passed around her, and
unconscious of the interest she herself excited, no wonder that she
seemed to us like an angel sent to cheer us in our house of bondage. Of
her own family she was deservedly the darling; even Dick Phillips, whom
three successive tutors had given up in despair, became the most docile
of pupils under his sister Clara; accustomed early to join her brothers
in all out-door sports, she was an excellent horsewoman, a fearless
sailor, and an untiring explorer of mountains and waterfalls, without
losing her naturally feminine character, or becoming in any degree a
hoyden or a romp. She sang the sweet national airs of Wales with a voice
whose richness of tone was only second to its power of expression. She
did every thing with the air of one who, while delighting others, is
conscious only of delighting herself; and never seeking admiration,
received it as gracefully as it was ungrudgingly bestowed.

If there is one form of taking exercise which I really hate, it is what
people call dancing. I am passionately fond of music; but why people
should conceive it necessary to shuffle about in all varieties of
awkwardness, in order to enjoy it to their satisfaction, has been, is,
and probably will ever be, beyond my comprehension. It is all very well
for young ladies on the look-out for husbands to affect a fondness for
dancing: in the first place, some women dance gracefully, and even
elegantly, and show themselves off undoubtedly to advantage; (if any
exhibition on a woman's part be an advantage;) then it gives an excuse
for whispering, and squeezing of hands, and stealing flowers, and a
thousand nameless skirmishings preparatory to what they are endeavouring
to bring about--an engagement; but for a man to be fond of shuffling and
twirling himself out of the dignity of step which nature gave
him--picking his way through a quadrille, like a goose upon hot bricks,
or gyrating like a bad tee-totum in what English fashionables are
pleased to term a "valse," I never see a man thus occupied, without a
fervent desire to kick him. "What a Goth!" I hear a fair reader of
eighteen, prettily ejaculate--