" We must understand these remarks as applying to French
society, in respect even of which we are not inclined to admit their
truth. Yet there is a certain justice in the inference that women
are often most severely condemned by those who are no better than
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.
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