well as on the world, so that she would ask, 'Are we so much better?'
when someone supremely erratic was dangled before the popular eye. She
had not studied her Goethe to no purpose. Nor did the very ridiculous
creature who is commonly the outcast of all compassion miss having the
tolerant word from her, however much she might be of necessity in the
laugh, for Moliere also was of her repertory. Hers was the charity which
is perceptive and embracing: we may feel certain that she was never a
dupe of the poor souls, Christian and Muslim, whose tales of simple
misery or injustice moved her to friendly service. Egyptians, _consule
Junio_, would have met the human interpreter in her, for a picture to set
beside that of the vexed Satirist. She saw clearly into the later Nile
products, though her view of them was affectionate; but had they been
exponents of original sin, her charitableness would have found the
philosophical word on their behalf, for the reason that they were not in
the place of vantage. The service she did to them was a greater service
done to her country, by giving these quivering creatures of the baked
land proof that a Christian Englishwoman could be companionable, tender,
beneficently motherly with them, despite the reputed insurmountable
barriers of alien race and religion. Sympathy was quick in her breast
for all the diverse victims of mischance; a shade of it, that was not
indulgence, but knowledge of the roots of evil, for malefactors and for
the fool. Against the cruelty of despotic rulers and the harshness of
society she was openly at war, at a time when championship of the lowly
or the fallen was not common. Still, in this, as in everything
controversial, it was the [Greek text] with her. That singular union of
the balanced intellect with the lively heart arrested even in advocacy
the floods pressing for pathos. Her aim was at practical measures of
help; she doubted the uses of sentimentality in moving tyrants or
multitudes to do the thing needed. Moreover, she distrusted eloquence,
Parliamentary, forensic, literary; thinking that the plain facts are the