station, they can be but ladies, and no more. But almost every man who
lives in the world has the happiness, let us hope, of counting a few such
persons amongst his circle of acquaintance--women, in whose angelical
natures, there is something awful, as well as beautiful, to contemplate;
at whose feet the wildest and fiercest of us must fall down and humble
ourselves;--in admiration of that adorable purity which never seems to do
or to think wrong.

Arthur Pendennis had the good fortune to have a mother endowed with these
happy qualities. During his childhood and youth, the boy thought of her
as little less than an angel,--as a supernatural being, all wisdom, love,
and beauty. When her husband drove her into the county town, or to the
assize balls or concerts there, he would step into the assembly with his
wife on his arm, and look the great folks in the face, as much as to say,
"Look at that, my lord; can any of you show me a woman like that?" She
enraged some country ladies with three times her money, by a sort of
desperate perfection which they found in her. Miss Pybus said she was
cold and haughty; Miss Pierce, that she was too proud for her station;
Mrs. Wapshot, as a doctor of divinity's lady, would have the pas of her,
who was only the wife of a medical practitioner. In the meanwhile, this
lady moved through the world quite regardless of all the comments that
were made in her praise or disfavour. She did not seem to know that she
was admired or hated for being so perfect: but carried on calmly through
life, saying her prayers, loving her family, helping her neighbours, and
doing her duty.

That even a woman should be faultless, however, is an arrangement not
permitted by nature, which assigns to us mental defects, as it awards to
us headaches, illnesses, or death; without which the scheme of the world
could not be carried on,--nay, some of the best qualities of mankind