udden flames in
susceptible hearts, nor did she seem to demand instant homage by the
form and step of a goddess; but we found her to be a good-looking woman
of some thirty or thirty-three years of age, with soft, peach-like
cheeks,--rather too like those of a cherub,--with sparkling eyes which
were hardly large enough, with good teeth, a white forehead, a dimpled
chin, and a full bust. Such outwardly was Mrs. General Talboys. The
description of the inward woman is the purport to which these few pages
will be devoted.

There are two qualities to which the best of mankind are much subject,
which are nearly related to each other, and as to which the world has
not yet decided whether they are to be classed among the good or evil
attributes of our nature. Men and women are under the influence of them
both, but men oftenest undergo the former, and women the latter. They
are ambition and enthusiasm. Now Mrs. Talboys was an enthusiastic woman.

As to ambition, generally as the world agrees with Mark Antony in
stigmatising it as a grievous fault, I am myself clear that it is a
virtue; but with ambition at present we have no concern. Enthusiasm
also, as I think, leans to virtue's side, or, at least, if it be a
fault, of all faults it is the prettiest. But then, to partake at all of
virtue or even to be in any degree pretty, the enthusiasm must be true.

Bad coin is known from good by the ring of it, and so is bad enthusiasm.
Let the coiner be ever so clever at his art, in the coining of
enthusiasm the sound of true gold can never be imparted to the false
metal; and I doubt whether the cleverest she in the world can make false
enthusiasm palatable to the taste of man; to the taste of any woman the
enthusiasm of another woman is never very palatable.

We understood at Rome that Mrs. Talboys had a considerable family,--four
or five children, we were told,--but she brought with her only one
daughter, a little girl about twelve years of age. She had torn herself
asunder, as she told me, from the younger nurslings of her heart, and
had left them to the care of a devoted female attendant, whose love was
all but maternal. And then she said a word or two about the general in
terms which made me almost think that this quasi-maternal love extended
itself beyond the children. The idea, however, was a mistaken one,
arising from the strength of her language, to which I was then
unaccustomed. I have since become aware that nothing can be mor