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young lady well born, high
bred, and a denizen of the fashionable world. Under a strange
concurrence of circumstances she coolly married the captain of an East
Indiaman. The deed done, and with her eyes open, for she was not, to
say, in love with him, she took a judicious line--and kept it: no
hankering after Mayfair, no talking about "Lord this" and "Lady that,"
to commercial gentlewomen; no amphibiousness. She accepted her
place in society, reserving the right to embellish it with the graces she
had gathered in a higher sphere. In her home, and in her person, she
was little less elegant than a countess; yet nothing more than a
merchant-captain's wife; and she reared that commander's children in a
suburban villa, with the manners which adorn a palace. When they
happen to be there. She had a bugbear; Slang. Could not endure the
smart technicalities current; their multitude did not overpower her
distaste; she called them "jargon"--"slang" was too coarse a word for
her to apply to slang: she excluded many a good "racy idiom" along
with the real offenders; and monosyllables in general ran some risk of'
having to show their passports. If this was pedantry, it went no further;
she was open, free, and youthful with her young pupils; and had the art
to put herself on their level: often, when they were quite young, she
would feign infantine ignorance, in order to hunt trite truth in couples
with them, and detect, by joint experiment, that rainbows cannot, or
else will not, be walked into, nor Jack-o'-lantern be gathered like a
cowslip; and that, dissect we the vocal dog--whose hair is so like a
lamb's--never so skilfully, no fragment of palpable bark, no sediment of
tangible squeak, remains inside him to bless the inquisitive little
operator, &c., &c. When they advanced from these elementary
branches to Languages, History, Tapestry, and "What Not," she
managed still to keep by their side learning with them, not just hearing
them lessons down from the top of a high tower of maternity. She never
checked their curiosity, but made herself share it; never gave them, as
so many parents do, a white-lying answer; wooed their affections with
subtle though innocent art, thawed their reserve, obtained their love,
and retained their respect. Briefly, a female Chesterfield; her husband's
lover after marriage, though not before; and the mild monitress the
elder sister, the favourite companion and bosom friend of both her
children.

They were remarkably dissimilar; and perhaps I may be allowed to
preface the narrative of their adventures by a delineation; as in country
churches an individual pipes the keynote, and the tune comes raging
after.
Edward, then, had a great calm eye, that was always looking folk full in
the face, mildly; his countenance comely and manly, but no more; too
square for Apollo; but sufficed for John Bull. His figure it was that
charmed the curious observer of male beauty. He was five feet ten; had
square shoulders, a deep chest, masculine flank, small foot, high instep.
To crown all this, a head, overflowed by ripples of dark brown hair, sat
with heroic grace upon his solid white throat, like some glossy falcon
new lighted on a Parian column.
This young gentleman had decided qualities, positive and negative. He
could walk up to a five-barred gate and clear it, alighting on the other
side like a fallen feather; could row all day, and then dance all night;
could fling a cricket ball a hundred and six yards; had a lathe and a
tool-box, and would make you in a trice a chair, a table, a doll, a
nutcracker, or any other moveable, useful, or the very reverse. And
could not learn his lessons, to save his life.
His sister Julia was not so easy to describe. Her figure was tall, lithe,
and serpentine; her hair the colour of a horse-chestnut fresh from its
pod; her ears tiny and shell-like, her eyelashes long and silky; her
mouth small when grave, large when smiling; her eyes pure hazel by
day, and tinged with a little violet by night. But in jotting down these
details, true as they are, I seem to myself to be painting fire, with a little
snow and saffron mixed on a marble pallet. There is a beauty too
spiritual to be chained in a string of items; and Julia's fair features were
but the china vessel that brimmed over with the higher loveliness of her
soul. Her essential charm was, what shall I say? Transparence.
"You would have said her very body thought."
Modesty, Intelligence, and, above all, Enthusiasm, shone through her,
and out of her, and made her an airy, fiery, household joy. Briefly, an
incarnate sunbeam.
This one could learn her lessons with unreasonable rapidity,