par des
defauts legers, mais qui se font sentir a tout
moment."--VOLTAIRE.

THE family of Glenfern have already said so much for themselves that it
seems as if little remained to be told by their biographer. Mrs. Douglas
was the only member of the community who was at all conscious of the
unfortunate association of characters and habits that had just taken
place. She was a stranger to Lady Juliana; but she was interested by her
youth, beauty, and elegance, and felt for the sacrifice she had made--a
sacrifice so much greater than it was possible she ever could have
conceived or anticipated. She could in some degree enter into the nature
of her feelings towards the old ladies; for she too had felt how
disagreeable people might contrive to render themselves without being
guilty of any particular fault, and how much more difficult it is to
bear with the weaknesses than the vices of our neighbours. Had these
ladies' failings been greater in a moral point of view, it might not
have been so arduous a task to put up with them. But to love such a set
of little, trifling, tormenting foibles, all dignified with the name of
virtues, required, from her elegant mind, an exertion of its highest
principles--a continual remembrance of that difficult Christian precept,
"to bear with one another." A person of less sense than Mrs. Douglas
would have endeavoured to open the eyes of their understandings on what
appeared to be the folly and narrow mindedness of their ways; but she
refrained from the attempt, not from want of benevolent exertion, but
from an innate conviction that their foibles all originated in what was
now incurable, viz. the natural weakness of their minds, together with
their ignorance of the world and the illiberality and prejudices of a
vulgar education. "These poor women," reasoned the charitable
Mrs. Douglas, "are perhaps, after all, better characters in the sight of
God than I am. He who has endowed us all as His wisdom has seen fit, and
has placed me amongst them, oh, may He teach me to remember that we are
all His children, and enable me to bear with their faults, while I study
to correct my own."

Thus did this amiable woman contrive not only to live in peace, but,
without sacrificing her own liberal ideas, to be actually beloved by
those amongst whom her lot had been cast, however dissimilar to herself.
But for that Christian spirit (in which must ever be included a liberal
mind and gentle temper), she