of created things; humble to their inferiors, but with a proud, and self-respecting, and considerate humility; open, and free, and frank toward their equals; but proud, although not wanting in loyalty and proper reverence for the great, and almost haughty of demeanor to their superiors, when they encountered any such, which was, indeed, of rare and singular occurrence. It was a strange thing, indeed, that these lone girls should have possessed such characters, so strongly marked, so powerful and striking; should have acquired accomplishments, so many and so various in their nature. It will appear, perhaps, even stranger to merely superficial thinkers, that the formation of those powerful characters had been, for the most part, brought about by the very circumstances which would at first have appeared most unpropitious—their solitary habits namely, and their seclusion, almost absolute seclusion, from the gay world of fashion and of folly. The large and opulent county, in which their patrimony lay, was indeed then, as now, studded with the estates, the manors, and the parks of the richest and the noblest of England’s aristocracy, yet the deep glens and lofty moorlands among which Ingleborough Hall was situate, are even to this day a lonely and sequestered region; no great post-road winds through their devious passes; and, although in the close vicinity of large and populous towns, they are, even in the nineteenth century, but little visited, and are occupied by a population singularly primitive and pastoral in all its thoughts and feelings. Much more then in those days, when carriages were seen but rarely beyond the streets of the metropolis, when roads were wild and rugged, and intercourse between the nearest places, unless of more than ordinary magnitude, difficult and uncertain, was that wild district to be deemed secluded. So much so, indeed, was this the case, at the time of which I write, that there were not within a circle of some twenty miles two families of equal rank, or filling the same station in society, with the Hawkwoods. This, had the family been in such circumstances of domestic health and happiness as would have permitted the girls to mingle in the gaieties of the neighborhood, would have been a serious and severe misfortune; as they must, from continual intercourse with their inferiors, have contracted, in a greater or less degree, a grossness both of mind and manners; and would, most probably, have fallen into that most destructive habit—destructive to the mind, I mean, and to all chance of progress or advancement—the love of queening it in low society. It was, therefore, under their circumstances, including the loss of one parent and the entire bereavement of the other, fortunate in no small degree that they were compelled to seek their pleasures and their occupations, no less than their duties, within the sphere of the domestic circle.