themselves; and this insincerity of uncharity is far more to be dreaded
than the over-zeal of virtuous hearts, which oftenest helps and heals
where it has been obliged to wound.

At the risk of unduly multiplying quotations, we will quote here what
George says of her mother in this, the flower of her days. At a later
day, the ill-regulated character suffered and made others suffer with
its own discords, which education and moral training had done nothing to
reconcile. The manly support, too, of the nobler nature was wanting,
and the best half of her future and its possibilities was buried in the
untimely grave of her husband. Here is what she was when she was at her
best:--

"My mother never felt herself either humiliated or honored by the
company of people who might have considered themselves her superiors.
She ridiculed keenly the pride of fools, the vanity of _parvenus_, and,
feeling herself of the people to her very finger-ends, she thought
herself more noble than all the patricians and aristocrats of the earth.
She was wont to say that those of her race had redder blood and larger
veins than others,--which I incline to believe; for, if moral and
physical energy constitute in reality the excellence of races, we cannot
deny that this energy is compelled to diminish in those who lose the
habit of labor and the courage of endurance. This aphorism is certainly
not without exception, and we may add that excess of labor and of
endurance enervates the organization as much as the excess of luxury and
idleness. But it is certain, in general, that life rises from the bottom
of society, and loses itself in measure as it rises to the top, like the
sap in plants.

"My mother was not one of those bold _intrigantes_ whose secret passion