membered a few kind, pleasant words of hers when
you forgot the wit of the wittiest ladies, the learning of the most
learned. The influence thus possessed, and unconsciously possessed,
by my sister over every one with whom she came in contact--over men
especially--may, I think be very simply accounted for, in very few
sentences.

We live in an age when too many women appear to be ambitious of morally
unsexing themselves before society, by aping the language and the
manners of men--especially in reference to that miserable modern
dandyism of demeanour, which aims at repressing all betrayal of warmth
of feeling; which abstains from displaying any enthusiasm on any
subject whatever; which, in short, labours to make the fashionable
imperturbability of the face the faithful reflection of the fashionable
imperturbability of the mind. Women of this exclusively modern
order, like to use slang expressions in their conversation; assume
a bastard-masculine abruptness in their manners, a bastard-masculine
licence in their opinions; affect to ridicule those outward developments
of feeling which pass under the general appellation of "sentiment."
Nothing impresses, agitates, amuses, or delights them in a hearty,
natural, womanly way. Sympathy looks ironical, if they ever show it:
love seems to be an affair of calculation, or mockery, or contemptuous
sufferance, if they ever feel it.

To women such as these, my sister Clara presented as complete a contrast
as could well be conceived. In this contrast lay the secret of her
influence, of the voluntary tribute of love and admiration which
followed her wherever she went.

Few men have not their secret moments of deep feeling--moments when,
amid the wretched trivialities and hypocrisies of modern society, the
image will present itself to their minds of some woman, fresh,
innocent, gentle, sincere; some woman whose emotions are still warm and
impressible, whose affections and sympathies can still appear in her
actions, and give the colour to her thoughts; some woman in whom we
could put as perfect faith and trust, as if we were children; whom we
despair of finding near the hardening influences of the world; whom we
could scarcely venture to look for, except in solitary places far away
in the country; in little rural shrines, shut up from society, among
woods and fields, and lonesome boundary-hills. When any women happen to
realise, or nearly to realise, such an image as this, they possess