In this respect she was considered a remarkable woman by those who deemed their judgement in such matters sound. Once in the world, her care was at an end. I have heard, sir--I have read of mother's love. I can feel what it should be; I can guess what wonders it may work in the wayward spirit of man; for I longed and yearned for it, but it never came. My elder sister died when a child of two years. My father was then in the zenith of his prosperity, and was absorbed in his affairs; yet this loss--this heavy blow--came upon him like a thunderstroke. Many things occupied his time, but this alone his mind. Deep sighs would escape him in the active prosecution of his business, and his cheeks were suffused with tears as he sped along the city's streets, sacred only to gain and worldly commerce. He doated on his girls, and to lose one was to lose half the joy of his existence. The effect of this calamity was otherwise on my mother; and I revert to the difference in order to make clear to you their respective natures. My mother wept at the death of her child--she would not else have been a woman; but as I have seen weak watery clouds pass across the moon's surface, leaving the planet untouched and tranquil in their transit, so the thin veil of her sorrows did not disturb the palpable unconcern--the neutrality of soul that were behind. One easy flow of tears, and the claim of the departed was satisfied. In a day, the privation had ceased to be one. Here then, sir, are the seeds of a wilderness of after woe: my father, overflowing with affection, and craving, as it were, for sympathy, turning to my mother, and finding there a blank--nothing to rest upon. 'What is fortune,' says the poet, 'to a heart yearning for affection, and finding it not? Is it not as a triumphal crown to the brows of one parched with fever, and asking for one fresh, healthful draught--_the cup of cold water_?' So it was here, and hence husband and wife became soon estranged from one another. The former, busy from hour to hour in his counting-house, had little time to spare upon his children; the latter, with all her time at her disposal, took no delight in the task. My sister and I, in our infancy, were made over to strangers; and from the hands of the nurse we were transmitted to those of the schoolmistress. When I was old enough, I was removed from my sister's school, and placed, with a select number of young gentlemen, under the care of a highly respectable master. It was here that my pride began to take root. One of my schoolfellows was the son of a general, another the son of a large landed proprietor, a third was heir to a peerage, a fourth traced his ancestors to a period when the soil was yet untrodden by a Norman foot. I was chagrined at my position--irritated--humbled, but the boys, especially those to whom I have alluded, behaved towards me with extreme kindness, and whilst I felt humbled, I did not envy them, because I loved them. I had one advantage,