But strange it is to tell, that in these eyes of vesper gentleness, there was a considerable obliquity of vision; and much beyond that slight obliquity which is often supposed to be an attractive _foible_ of the countenance; and yet though it _ought_ to have been displeasing or repulsive, in fact it was not. Indeed, all faults, had they been ten times and greater, would have been swallowed up or neutralised by that supreme expression of her features, to the intense unity of which every lineament in the fixed parts, and every undulation in the moving parts or play of her countenance, concurred, viz., a sunny benignity--a radiant perception--such as in this world De Quincy says he never saw equalled or approached.” Such, then, is the portrait of Mrs. Wordsworth; and now for that of sweet, musical, romantic, true and generous Dorothy. She was much shorter, much slighter, and perhaps in other respects as different from Mrs. Wordsworth in personal characteristics as could have been wished for the most effective contrast. “Her face was of Egyptian brown: rarely in a woman of English birth had a more determined gipsy tan been seen. Her eyes were not soft, as Mrs. Wordsworth’s, nor were they fierce or bold; but they were wild and startling, and hurried in their motion. Her manner was warm, and even ardent; her sensibility seemed constitutionally deep; and some subtle fire of impassioned intellect apparently burned within her, which, being alternately pushed forward into a conspicuous expression by the irrepressible instinct of her temperament, and then immediately checked in obedience to the decorum of her sex and age, and her maidenly condition (for she had rejected all offers of marriage, out of pure sisterly regard to her brother, and subsequently to her sister’s children) gave to her whole demeanour and to her conversation, an air of embarrassment and even of self conflict, that was sometimes distressing to witness. Even her very utterance, and enunciation often, or rather generally, suffered in point of clearness and steadiness, from the agitation of her excessive organic sensibility, and perhaps from some morbid irritability of the nerves. At times the self-contracting and self-baffling of her feelings, caused her even to stammer, and so determinedly to stammer, that a stranger who should have seen her, and quitted her in that state of feeling, would have certainly set her down for one plagued with that infirmity of speech, as distressingly as Charles Lamb himself.... The greatest deductions from Miss Wordsworth’s attractions, and from the exceeding interest which surrounded her in right of her character, her history, and the relation which she fulfilled towards her brother, was the glancing quickness of her motions, and other circumstances in her deportment--such as her stooping attitude when walking, which gave an ungraceful, and even an unsexual character to her appearance when out of doors. She did not