“God gave her,” says one of her two devoted annalists, who we wish were not so brief and meagre of detail—“God gave her such a comeliness as though she was not proud of it, yet she was so content with it as not to go about to mend it by any art.” Her fortune was large, her benevolence wide-spreading. All the countryside knew her for the living representative of the ever-hospitable houses of Newport and Bromley. “She gave not on some great days,” continues Dr. Donne, “or at solemn goings abroad; but as God’s true almoners, the sun and moon, that pass on in a continual doing of good; as she received her daily bread from God, so daily she distributed it, and imparted it to others.” In these years of her wifehood and widowhood at Montgomery Castle (the “romancy place” dating from the eleventh century, and ruined, like the fine old house at High Ercall, during the Civil Wars), and afterwards at Oxford and London, she reared her happy crew of boys and girls in an air of generosity and honor; training them to habits of hardiness and simplicity, and to the equal relish of work and play. “Herself with her whole family (as a church in that elect lady’s house, to whom John wrote his second Epistle) did every Sabbath shut up the day at night with a general, with a cheerful singing of psalms.” One may guess at young Richard’s turmoil in-doors, and at the little Elizabeth’s soft, patient ways, and think of George (on Sundays at any rate) as the child of content, “the contesseration of elegances” worthy Archdeacon Oley called him. The fair and stately matron moving over them and among them was not without her prejudices. “I was once,” Edward testifies, “in danger of drowning, learning to swim. My mother, upon her blessing, charged me never to learn swimming; telling me, further, that she had learned of more drowned than saved by it.” Though the given reason failed to impress him, he adds, the commandment did; so that the accomplished Crichton of Cherbury, who understood alchemy, broke his way through metaphysics, and rode the Great Horse; the ambassador, author, and beau, to whom Ben Jonson sent his greeting: “What man art thou that art so many men, All-virtuous Herbert?” even he lacked, on principle, the science of keeping himself alive in an alien element, because it had been pronounced less risky to die outright! It was a pretty paradox, and one which sets down our high-minded Magdalen as quite feminine, quite human.