of life. Mrs. Sinclair had been well educated, and in her husband's
conversation and society found further opportunity of improving, not
only her intellect, but her heart. Though respectably descended, she
could not claim relationship with what may be emphatically termed the
gentry of the country; but she could with that class so prevalent in the
north of Ireland, which ranks in birth only one grade beneath them. I
say in birth;--for in all the decencies of life, in the unostentatious
bounties of benevolence, in moral purity, domestic harmony, and a
conscientious observance of religion, both in the comeliness of
its forms, and the cheerful freedom of its spirit, this class ranks
immeasurably above every other which Irish society presents. They who
compose it are not sufficiently wealthy to relax those pursuits of
honorable industry which constitute them, as a people, the ornament of
our nation; nor does their good-sense and decent pride permit them to
follow the dictates of a mean ambition, by struggling to reach that
false elevation, which is as much beneath them in all the virtues
that grace life, as it is above them in the dazzling dissipation
which renders the violation or neglect of its best duties a matter of
fashionable etiquette, or the shameful privilege of high birth. To this
respectable and independent class did the immediate relations of Mrs.
Sinclair belong; and, as might be expected, she failed not to bring all
its virtues to her husband's heart and household--there to soothe him by
their influence, to draw fresh energy from their mutual intercourse, and
to shape the habits of their family into that perception of self-respect
and decent propriety, which in domestic duty, dress, and general
conduct, uniformly results from a fine sense of moral feeling, blended
with high religious principle. This, indeed, is the class whose example
has diffused that spirit of keen intelligence and enterprise throughout
the north which makes the name of an Ulster manufacturer or merchant a
synonym for integrity and honor. From it is derived the creditable love