; but yet never shall I
see her equal for pure feminine beauty, for form and outline, for
passionless grace, and sweet, gentle, womanly softness. All her sad
tale was written upon her brow; all its sadness and all its poetry.
One could read there the fearful, all but fatal danger to which her
childhood had been exposed, and the daily thanks with which she
praised her God for having spared and saved her.

But I am running back to the mother in attempting to say a word
about her children. Of the two, Emmeline, the younger, was the more
like her; but no one who was a judge of outline could imagine that
Emmeline, at her mother's age, would ever have her mother's beauty.
Nevertheless, they were fine, handsome girls, more popular in the
neighbourhood than any of their neighbours, well educated, sensible,
feminine, and useful; fitted to be the wives of good men.

And what shall I say of Miss Letty? She was ten years older than her
brother, and as strong as a horse. She was great at walking, and
recommended that exercise strongly to all young ladies as an antidote
to every ill, from love to chilblains. She was short and dapper in
person; not ugly, excepting that her nose was long, and had a little
bump or excrescence at the end of it. She always wore a bonnet, even
at meal times; and was supposed by those who were not intimately
acquainted with the mysteries of her toilet, to sleep in it; often,
indeed, she did sleep in it, and gave unmusical evidence of her doing
so. She was not illnatured; but so strongly prejudiced on many points
as to be equally disagreeable as though she were so. With her, as
with the world in general, religion was the point on which those
prejudices were the strongest; and the peculiar bent they took was
horror and hatred of popery. As she lived in a country in which the
Roman Catholic was the religion of all the poorer classes, and of
very many persons who were not poor, there was ample scope in which
her horror and hatred could work. She was charitable to a fault, and
would exercise that charity for the good of Papists as willingly as
for the good of Protestants; but in doing so she always remembered
the good cause. She always clogged the flannel petticoat with some
Protestant teaching, or burdened the little coat and trousers with
the pains and penalties of idolatry.

When her brother had married the widow Talbot, her anger with him
and her hatred towards her sister-in-law had been extreme. But time