the letters she received were about either the poor or the interests of indigent religious communities of which the sisters of charity and mercy were her especial favourites. But, undoubtedly, still it was the letters of the soldiers that seemed to interest her most. On the very evening after her death, a letter came from a private in Hong Kong begging of her to take charge of his money, and stating to what purpose he wished to apply it. But these details must not detain us longer. In fine, as we read of Mlle. de Louvencourt, you would see her after attending to the interests of poor people generally more joyous, and appearing to feel more flattered, than another would be seen after receiving attention from the highest nobles, or being decked with jewels for an assembly of the great world.

If charnel-houses and our graves must not send those that we bury back, methinks our chantry chapel has at all events a voice not to be suppressed from each of its stones, proclaiming that at least such good as this which has been now recalled to memory must not be interred with her bones.

CHAPTER X.

E are to dwell to-day for a short time upon the kind and amiable manners that belonged to a life of faith, of which, as witnessed in this pure and noble representative, the memory is like the delicate perfume of a flower on a summer's morning.

"What is sad, bitter, and painful," says Louis Ratisbonne, "is not to be hated, but to hate." It is by no means difficult to find in either sex the person who can ascertain from experience how far this assertion is true, there are few things commoner than the power to hate. No matter what be the object, one hears continually, this displeases and that is odious; "I don't think so" here, and "I must differ from you" there. What a troublesome companion all this

makes, or to use a common phrase in French that is not particularly refined, "Quel mauvais coucheur cela ferait!" On the other hand, to finish the sentence of our author, "what is sweet, noble, and divine, is not to be loved, but to love." Now this latter result constituted the disposition of Jane Mary; and she sought no return beyond what was yielded by the faculty itself. She used to say, indeed, with a kind of inverse nod that was very expressive, "I don't expect gratitude, I never yet met with it;" and this testimony, based upon fact, was itself something assuredly singular. But so it was in her case. Most of those to whom at some period or other she had shown extraordinary kindness, such as is seldom or ever heard of in what is called society where people do not much like disclosing their pecuniary wants, seemed to remember it only to shun her afterwards, or do what in them lay to indicate that they thought no more of it. But she only laughed the while, and said, when you forced her to speak of the circumstance, that such was the world. She had a young heart to the last hour of her life; that is, it was a heart that occasionally showed itself as young as when it animated one of the most beautiful and graceful girls in London, and perhaps, at their own weapons, a match for the best of them.

"You can excite anger and displeasure by seventeen different measures," said gravely the precise Aristotle. Jane Mary was not a proficient in that curious course of instruction; but, on the other hand, I believe it would have puzzled the Stagyrite to say by how many methods she succeeded in conciliating the esteem of those who approached her. Excepting in the cases we have alluded to, where she departed from the ordinary usages of society to help others in their need to an extent bordering on prodigality, it was impossible to know her without becoming her friend. The physicians who came to the house when any one was ill became her friends, though she always spoke to them religiously of God, and nobly of the soul, appearing sometimes to be more concerned about their condition than about what concerned herself. When travelling in France, all the people of the hotels along the road seemed to welcome her as a friend. She hated giving trouble to any one, whether at home or out, and endeavoured to do every thing

herself. She would never take any step without first asking whether you would like it, accommodating herself in all things to the desire of others. As for strangers, she used even to incur blame for seeming to take as lively an interest in their welfare as in those of her own family. "Pooh! is that all?" some one used to say to her, "why I really thought that it was some rare fortune for ourselves." Whenever she heard of an emergency she had no rest, contriving how to serve the people who were involved in it. As if fearing to incur blame for being so generous to persons of respectable station though of slender fortune, she used to begin or finish her announcements as minister of finance by a certain sly sacrifice to your own prejudices, saying that it was greater charity than giving money to the beggars; she knew that she had you there. On the whole, she might have reminded one of what is said of Angélique Paulet in the Grand Cyrus,-"No one has ever shown a more regular and exact civility. She avoids as much as possible disobliging any one, and seeks with care to oblige all the world." I do not mean to imply that there was any thing of base alloy in her amiability. It is true, as Mlle. de Scudéry would say, this goodness was not a false goodness, capable of causing her to dissemble when it was necessary to unmask a thing; for, as she always spoke and acted under a sense of duty, she never in any serious matter considered whether it would please or displease others, but she sought to serve them by speaking the truth, though still showing herself gentle and polite *. If occasion had ever been presented, there would infallibly have been truth in making the same report of her disposition as we find in the well-known passage of Shakspeare, where it is said to the offender,—

66

Though she harbours you as her kinsman, she's nothing allied to your disorder. If you can separate yourself and your misdemeanours, you are welcome to the house; if not, and it would please you to take leave of her, she is very willing to bid you farewell." But exempt from the need of such deliverances, the true general tone of her demeanour was complaisance, as if she had studied in l'Ordène de Chevalerie, and had learned

*Le Grand Cyrus.

"D'estre plains de courtoisie

Et fere amer à toutes genz."

She showed a readiness that is not met with every day to oblige; insomuch that she used often to complain jestingly, and say that people in the house were in habits of robbing her right and left. "I can keep nothing from them," she used to say, laughing, "however well I may think to hide things;" and then she would mysteriously let you into some new secret respecting the place in which something you wanted was concealed. But the fact is, she wishes what you wish; she says what you say; you call her, she comes to you; you ask her, she replies; and, above all, whether it be poor or great people that come to her, she has no airs; for, as Cousin remarks in his admirable work entitled "The French Society in the Seventeenth Century,"—"La simplicité est la compagne de la vraie aristocratie *." And she of whom we speak, having our Lord and His blessed mother ever before her eyes, kindness, goodwill, and all the delicate attributes of a pure and affectionate heart (there is really no exaggeration in saying it), did breathe within her lips like man new made. As to the poor, she would have every young nobleman just such as Elia wished, that is to say, the Preux Chevalier of Age-the Sir Calidore or Sir Tristan to those who have no Calidores or Tristans to defend them; and, by the way, that is only what Hue de Tabarie, in his "Ordène de Chevalerie," wished, saying,

"Car femes doit l'on honourer

Et por lor droit fatigues porter."

Her woman's pride, and her love for the blessed Virgin, would come practically to direct her on all occasions when she saw that sex compromised. She reverenced her sex in the lowest state. She would have her son hand a poor beggar across the kennel, or assist the apple-woman to pick up her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray had just dissipated. Indeed, in that office, if you would let her, she would take part herself. You might describe her in the very words of Bishop Fisher

*La Société F., tom. ii. p. 288.

speaking of Margaret, Countess of Richmond and mother of King Henry VII., who at her death had thirty kings and queens allied to her within the fourth degree either of blood or affinity, and since her death has been allied in her posterity to thirty more. "She was of syngular easyness to be spoken unto, and full curtoise answere she would make to all that came unto her. Of mervayllous gentyleness she was unto all folks; unkynde she wolde not be unto no creature *." In the society of her equals her kindness evinced an admirable tact in regard to the form which it assumed. Politeness, as we all know, offends where it appears too prominently. There was nothing angular or obtrusive in her civility; it was like the air, -you breathed it and were well. She possessed what the French of the seventeenth century used to term the gallant tone. "L'air galant de conversation consists," says Mlle. de Scudéry, "principally in thinking of things in an easy, natural way; inclining more towards sweetness and cheerfulness than towards the serious and abrupt, and in speaking with facility and in proper terms, without affectation. One ought also,' she adds, "to have in the mind a certain I know not what-insinuating and pleasing grace to win over the minds of others; and if I could well express what I feel, I would make you confess that one cannot be altogether amiable without having the gallant air-l'air galant †." There was, however, with all that, a cordial sweetness in her smile, the like to which you seldom saw in any other face. What we read in the memoirs of a French contemporary was literally true of her. "In the most passing relation with strangers she evinced a singular grace and goodness; though it was, above all, in the habits of the internal life of the family that most appeared the charm of her character, the liveliness of her turn of mind, the equanimity of her humour, and her constant desire to please every Her politeness was never at fault even with domestics; she was at one and the same time very discreet and perfectly sincere, very indulgent, but very firm; and whenever a senti

one.

*A mornynge remembrance had at the moneth minde of the noble Pryncess Mary, &c.

+ Grand Cyrus.