less by his striking exterior advantages, than the inward
worth that governed every action of his life, and whose
moral character, as completely sans tache as his fulfilment
of the social duties was proverbially sans reproche,
could not fail, in a certain degree, to reflect the
respect it commanded upon themselves.

As we have before observed, however, all the fervor of
their affection had been centered in their mother, and
that was indeed a melancholy night in which the youths
had been summoned to watch the passing away of her gentle
spirit for ever from their love. Isabella De Haldimar
had, from her earliest infancy, been remarkable for her
quiet and contemplative character; and, bred amid scenes
that brought at every retrospect, recollections of some
acted horror, it is not surprising that the bias given
by nature, should have been developed and strengthened
by the events that had surrounded her. Not dissimilar in
disposition, as she was not unlike in form, to her mother,
she was by that mother carefully endowed with those
gentler attributes of goodness, which, taking root within
a soil so eminently disposed to their reception, could
not fail to render her in after life a model of excellence,
both as a mother and a wife. Notwithstanding, however,
this moulding of her pliant, and well directed mind,
there was about her a melancholy, which while it gave
promise of the devoted affection of the mother, offered
but little prospect of cheerfulness, in an union with
one, who, reserved himself, could not be expected to
temper that melancholy, by the introduction of a gaiety