ence of Lady Harrowby
demands a brief tribute of affection and admiration from those
who, having best known her virtues, have the greatest reason to
deplore, and are best able to appreciate, her loss. She had a
mind of masculine strength united with a heart of feminine
softness; for while she was resolute and determined, and had
firmness and courage to bear up against the heaviest afflictions,
she had no coldness or insensibility in her temperament, but was
endowed with the tenderest and warmest affections. She was not by
nature imaginative, but her understanding was excellent and
utterly devoid of lumber and affectation. She had the sound
practical sense of a vigorous and healthy mind, without a
particle of vanity or conceit; she never attempted to plunge out
of her depth, or to soar beyond the level of her comprehension
and her knowledge. Her conversation therefore was happily
described by an old and attached friend and very competent judge,
when he said of it that 'her talk was so _crisp._'[5] She had an
even flow of animal spirits, was never capricious or uncertain,
full of vivacity, with a constant but temperate enjoyment of
society; never fastidious or exclusive, tasting and appreciating
excellence without despising or slighting mediocrity; attentive,
affable, and obliging to all, and equally delighting all, because
her agreeableness was inseparable from her character, and was an
habitual and unceasing emanation from it, rather than the
exertion of a latent power only drawn forth by the attraction of
corresponding intellectual energies; perfectly natural both in
manner and character, honest, straightforward, sincere, and true,
but with a genuine benevolence which made her sensitively shrink
from the infliction of pain. Delivered altogether from 'envy,
hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness,' she was ever inclined
to extenuate the faults, to pardon the errors, and to put the
best construction on the motives of others; no mean jealousy ever
entered her mind, no repining at the prosperity, however
unmerited, of other people. She drew pleasure from the purest of
all sources, from the contemplation of the success, the
happiness, and the welfare of her friends and acquaintance. With
an exquisite tact, without the slightest appearance of art, frank
without severity, open without imprudence, always negligent of
self and considerate of others, all her thoughts, impulses, and
actions were regulated by the united influen