fields, and lonesome boundary-hills.  When any women happen to realise, or nearly to realise, such an image as this, they possess that universal influence which no rivalry can ever approach.  On them really depends, and by then is really preserved, that claim upon the sincere respect and admiration of men, on which the power of the whole sex is based—­the power so often assumed by the many, so rarely possessed but by the few.

It was thus with my sister.  Thus, wherever she went, though without either the inclination, or the ambition to shine, she eclipsed women who were her superiors in beauty, in accomplishments, in brilliancy of manners and conversation—­conquering by no other weapon than the purely feminine charm of everything she said, and everything she did.

But it was not amid the gaiety and grandeur of a London season that her character was displayed to the greatest advantage.  It was when she was living where she loved to live, in the old country-house, among the old friends and old servants who would every one of them have died a hundred deaths for her sake, that you could study and love her best.  Then, the charm there was in the mere presence of the kind, gentle, happy young English girl, who could enter into everybody’s interests, and be grateful for everybody’s love, possessed its best and brightest influence.  At picnics, lawn-parties, little country gatherings of all sorts, she was, in her own quiet, natural manner, always the presiding spirit of general comfort and general friendship.  Even the rigid laws of country punctilio relaxed before her unaffected cheerfulness and irresistible good-nature.  She always contrived—­nobody ever knew how—­to lure the most formal people into forgetting their formality, and becoming natural for the rest of the day.  Even a heavy-headed, lumbering, silent country squire was not too much for her.  She managed to make him feel at his ease, when no one else would undertake the task; she could listen patiently to his confused speeches about dogs, horses, and the state of the crops, when other conversations were proceeding in which she was really interested; she could receive any little grateful attention that he wished to pay her—­no matter how awkward or ill-timed—­as she received attentions from any one else, with a manner which showed she considered it as a favour granted to her sex, not as a right accorded to it.

So, again, she always succeeded in diminishing the long list of those pitiful affronts and offences, which play such important parts in the social drama of country society.  She was a perfect Apostle-errant of the order of Reconciliation; and wherever she went, cast out the devil Sulkiness from all his strongholds—­the lofty and the lowly alike.  Our good rector used to call her his Volunteer Curate; and declare that she preached by a timely word, or a persuasive look, the best practical sermons on the blessings of peace-making that were ever composed.