the
other colonel, the he-colonel, was emphatically a gentleman; rather shy,
but not cold; hating trouble of every kind, pleased to seem a cipher in
his own house. If the sole study of Mrs. Colonel had been to make
her husband comfortable, she could not have succeeded better than by
bringing friends about him and then taking them off his hands. Colonel
Poyntz, the he-colonel, had seen, in his youth, actual service; but had
retired from his profession many years ago, shortly after his marriage.
He was a younger brother of one of the principal squires in the country;
inherited the house he lived in, with some other valuable property in
and about L----, from an uncle; was considered a good landlord; and
popular in Low Town, though he never interfered in its affairs. He was
punctiliously neat in his dress; a thin youthful figure, crowned with a
thick youthful wig. He never seemed to read anything but the newspapers
and the "Meteorological Journal:" was supposed to be the most
weatherwise man in all L----. He had another intellectual
predilection,--whist; but in that he had less reputation for wisdom.
Perhaps it requires a rarer combination of mental faculties to win
an odd trick than to divine a fall in the glass. For the rest, the
he-colonel, many years older than his wife, despite the thin youthful
figure, was an admirable aid-de-camp to the general in command, Mrs.
Colonel; and she could not have found one more obedient, more devoted,
or more proud of a distinguished chief.

In giving to Mrs. Colonel Poyntz the appellation of Queen of the Hill,
let there be no mistake. She was not a constitutional sovereign; her
monarchy was absolute. All her proclamations had the force of laws.

Such ascendancy could not have been attained without considerable
talents for acquiring and keeping it. Amidst all her off-hand, brisk,
imperious frankness, she had the ineffable discrimination of tact.
Whether civil or rude, she was never civil or rude but what she carried
public opinion along with her. Her knowledge of general society must
have been limited, as must be that of all female sovereigns; but she
seemed gifted with an intuitive knowledge of human nature, which she
applied to her special ambition of ruling it. I have not a doubt that if
she had been suddenly transferred, a perfect stranger, to the world of
London, she would have soon forced her way to its selectest circles,
and, when once there, held her own against a duchess.

I