Miss Belfield had been reared in the elegant seclusion, but subject to the somewhat contracting influences of an English country life (nature, if I may so express it, seems to have intended nations as well as individuals to be gregarious), enjoying in her father’s pretty vicarage her pets, her flowers, and the agreeable and polished society of the superior gentry of the vicinity. In the neighbouring village she dispensed her little charities, assuaged the sorrows of the poor and needy, and did all the good she could in her limited sphere; but of the sufferings of the world on a grand scale she knew not much, and as little understood, perhaps, their real causes and remedies. High as were her qualities of heart and intellect—and admirably would she write and speak on all matters on which she allowed them free scope—she was not (and who is?) without a defect; hers was one frequently to be met with amongst the most amiable and estimable of our countrywomen, a gentle intolerance and quiet assumption of infallibility on those subjects on which a very little reading and reflection ought, perhaps, to convince us that we should hold our opinions with the most trembling diffidence—I mean religion, and other kindred subjects relating to the powers and duties of mind, and the great interests of society, but particularly the former. This would evince itself in the expression of extreme pity and commiseration for the obstinacy or delusion of those who conscientiously differed from her in such matters, she, by her manner, never seeming to entertain the smallest shade of suspicion that she herself might be in error. This spirit, partially veiled by the graces of her manner, the kindness of her heart, and the evident rectitude of her intentions, did not look so ill as the ugly monster intolerance generally does; still it was her dark side, and but ill accorded with the general good sense by which she was characterized; her reading on these points had been as exclusive as her brother’s had been general.