When you really knew her, when she spoke to you freely, as to a friend—­then, the attraction of her voice, her smile her manner, impressed you indescribably.  Her slightest words and her commonest actions interested and delighted you, you knew not why.  There was a beauty about her unassuming simplicity, her natural—­exquisitely natural—­kindness of heart, and word, and manner, which preserved its own unobtrusive influence over you, in spite of all other rival influences, be they what they might.  You missed and thought of her, when you were fresh from the society of the most beautiful and the most brilliant women.  You remembered a few kind, pleasant words of hers when you forgot the wit of the wittiest ladies, the learning of the most learned.  The influence thus possessed, and unconsciously possessed, by my sister over every one with whom she came in contact—­over men especially—­may, I think be very simply accounted for, in very few sentences.

We live in an age when too many women appear to be ambitious of morally unsexing themselves before society, by aping the language and the manners of men—­especially in reference to that miserable modern dandyism of demeanour, which aims at repressing all betrayal of warmth of feeling; which abstains from displaying any enthusiasm on any subject whatever; which, in short, labours to make the fashionable imperturbability of the face the faithful reflection of the fashionable imperturbability of the mind.  Women of this exclusively modern order, like to use slang expressions in their conversation; assume a bastard-masculine abruptness in their manners, a bastard-masculine licence in their opinions; affect to ridicule those outward developments of feeling which pass under the general appellation of “sentiment.”  Nothing impresses, agitates, amuses, or delights them in a hearty, natural, womanly way.  Sympathy looks ironical, if they ever show it:  love seems to be an affair of calculation, or mockery, or contemptuous sufferance, if they ever feel it.

To women such as these, my sister Clara presented as complete a contrast as could well be conceived.  In this contrast lay the secret of her influence, of the voluntary tribute of love and admiration which followed her wherever she went.

Few men have not their secret moments of deep feeling—­moments when, amid the wretched trivialities and hypocrisies of modern society, the image will present itself to their minds of some woman, fresh, innocent, gentle, sincere; some woman whose emotions are still warm and impressible, whose affections and sympathies can still appear in her actions, and give the colour to her thoughts; some woman in whom we could put as perfect faith and trust, as if we were children; whom we despair of finding near the hardening influences of the world; whom we could scarcely venture to look for, except in solitary places far away in the country; in little rural shrines, shut up from society, among woods and