This is a digression, but, it came from contemplating the singular beauty of one woman's soul, among the tarnished multitude of victims to that social levity and those superficial virtues that society honors, and with which our modern fashionable women persuade themselves they are doing marvels in the world of good. If I make a paragon of Honor Edgeworth, it is because I can defy any broad-minded, unprejudiced critic to find a single grievous fault in her character. Besides the ordinary cultivation of her mind in all its faculties, Honor had another and a nobler ambition. She had acquired all the requisite knowledge to fit her for any station in life, from that of a nursery governess to that of the highest lady in the land. Her learning was not a smattering of this and that--a few words of German, a great deal too many of her own tongue, a well-studied enthusiasm for Tennyson and Longfellow, and may be now and then a word for the "Lake" school poets. Who has not met in their long or short run of experience with the modern graduate who "perfectly idolized" Tennyson or Byron, who "raved" about Shelley's poetical mysticism, or who was "fairly enchanted" with Goethe's deep romanticism. In some of her peculiar phases she even reckons as items of her illimitable knowledge selections from her "favorites" among the French romantics, or the realistic school may be more to her taste. She rolls up her eyes for Mozart and Beethoven and Gottschalk, but her heart thumps for Offenbach, Lamothe or Strauss. To make herself "interesting" in society she has "burned the midnight oil" over "David Copperfield," "Dombey and Son," "Jane Eyre," "East Lynne," "Endymion" and other popular volumes as they gain fame. She can sing snatches from all the finest operas, in Italian, German or French. She can dance the Boston and Rush Polka with unrivalled grace, she can flirt and affect the most becoming airs, she never misses a _matinee_ or evening performance at the Grand Opera House; she can do the "grape-vine" exquisitely on her silver-plated skates, and can toss the tennis ball with wonderful dexterity.