er unlaboured pleading that she
touches to the heart. She was not one to 'spread gold-leaf over her
acquaintances and make them shine,' as Horace Walpole says of Madame de
Sevigne; they would have been set shining from within, perhaps with a
mild lustre; sensibly to the observant, more credibly of the golden sort.
Her dislike of superlatives, when the marked effect had to be produced,
and it was not the literary performance she could relish as well as any
of us, renders hard the task of portraying a woman whose character calls
them forth. To him knowing her, they would not fit; her individuality
passes between epithets. The reading of a sentence of panegyric
(commonly a thing of extension) deadened her countenance, if it failed to
quicken the corners of her lips; the distended truth in it exhibited the
comic shadow on the wall behind. That haunting demon of human eulogy is
quashed by the manner she adopted, from instinct and training. Of her it
was known to all intimate with her that she could not speak falsely in
praise, nor unkindly in depreciation, however much the constant play of
her humour might tempt her to exalt or diminish beyond the bounds. But
when, for the dispersion of nonsense about men or things, and daintiness
held up the veil against rational eyesight, the _gros mot_ was demanded,
she could utter it, as from the Bench, with a like authority and
composure.

In her youth she was radiantly beautiful, with dark brows on a brilliant
complexion, the head of a Roman man, and features of Grecian line, save
for the classic Greek wall of the nose off the forehead. Women, not
enthusiasts, inclined rather to criticize, and to criticize so
independent a member of their sex particularly, have said that her entry
into a ballroom took the breath. Poetical comparisons run under heavy
weights in prose; but it would seem in truth, from the reports of her,
that wherever she appeared she could be likened to a Selene breaking
through cloud; and, further, the splendid vessel was richly freighted.
Trained by a scholar, much in the society of scholarly men, having an
innate bent to exactitude, and with a ready tongue docile to the curb,
she stepped into the world armed to be a match for it. She cut her way
through the accustomed troops of adorers, like what you will that is
buoyant and swims gallantly. Her quality of the philosophical humour
carried her easily over the shoals or the deeps in the way of a woman
claimin