ociating with the worst company, yet formed for the best;
living on the adulation of parasites, whose understanding she despises!
I grieve to compare what she is with what she might have been, had she
married a man of spirit, who would prudently have guided and tenderly
have restrained her. He has ruined her and himself by his indifference
and easiness of temper. Satisfied with knowing how much she is admired
and he envied, he never thought of reproving or restricting her. He is
proud of her, but has no particular delight in her company, and trusting
to her honor, lets her follow her own devices, while he follows his. She
is a striking instance of the eccentricity of that bounty which springs
from mere sympathy and feeling. Her charity requires stage effect;
objects that have novelty, and circumstances which, as Mr. Bayes says,
'elevate and surprise.' She lost, when an infant, her mother, a woman of
sense and piety; who, had she lived, would have formed the ductile mind
of the daughter, turned her various talents into other channels, and
raised her character to the elevation it was meant to reach."

"How melancholy a consideration is it," said I, "that so superior a
woman should live so much below her high destination! She is doubtless
utterly destitute of any thought of religion."

"You are much mistaken," replied Sir John, "I will not indeed venture to
pronounce that she entertains much _thought_ about it; but she by no
means denies its truth, nor neglects occasionally to exhibit its outward
and visible signs. She has not yet completely forgotten

All that the nurse and all the priest have taught.

I do not think that, like Lady Denham, she considers it as a
commutation, but she preserves it as a habit. A religious exercise,
however, never interferes with a worldly one. They are taken up in
succession, but with this distinction, the worldly business is to be
done, the religious one is not altogether to be left undone. She has a
moral chemistry which excels in the amalgamation of contradictory
ingredients. On a Sunday at Melbury castle if by any strange accident
she and her lord happen to be there together, she first reads him a
sermon, and plays at cribbage with him the rest of the evening. In town
one Sunday when she had a cold she wrote a tract on the sacrament, for
her maids, and then sat up all night at deep play. She declared if she
had been successful she would have given her winnings to charity; but as
s