the General, rendered his house a temple, where every elegance of rational society, taste, wit, and beauty resided.
Here it was that Mrs. De Brooke exhibited to the greatest advantage an innate affection—we may call it a talent—of pleasing, that showed itself in the uncommon versatility of manners and temper with which she accommodated herself to the humour and character of her guests. With the grave and sententious she could be serious and sentimental; with the gay she was animated and cheerful; yet, with all her powers of accommodation,—which is perhaps the true secret of pleasing,—nothing was more foreign to her manners than an affectation of conforming ostentatiously to the temper of others, or indeed any affectation whatever. From the evenness and uniformity of her spirits and disposition, it might be suspected that the change was in others unconsciously acceding to the attraction of her sphere. The appearance, however, was so far otherwise, that the proudest felt pleased when constrained by the sunshine of her presence and bewitching address to throw aside the mantle of reserve, and thus to step as it were out of themselves.
From the humble sphere to which by her birth she had seemed destined, and the softer feelings
