It is, as regards views of life and the world, a somewhat narrowing process to live amongst sympathizers; and it may be assumed as an axiom, that no people so much minister to a man's littleness as those who pity him. Now, when Lady Lendrick separated from Sir William, she carried away with her a large following of sympathizers. The Chief Baron was well known; his haughty overbearing temper at the bar, his assuming attitude in public life, his turn for sarcasm and epigram, had all contributed to raise up for him a crowd of enemies; and these, if not individually well disposed to Lady Lendrick, could at least look compassionately on one whose conjugal fate had been so unfortunate. All _her_ shortcomings were lost sight of in presence of _his_ enormities, for the Chief Baron's temper was an Aaron's rod of irascibility, which devoured every other; and when the verdict was once passed, that “no woman could live with him,” very few women offered a word in his defence. It is just possible that if it had not been for this weight in the opposite scale, Lady Lendrick herself would not have stood so high. Sir William's faults, however, were accounted to her for righteousness, and she traded on a very pretty capital in consequence. Surrounded by a large circle of female friends, she lived in a round of those charitable dissipations by which some people amuse themselves; and just as dull children learn their English history through a game, and acquire their geography through a puzzle, these grown-up children take in their Christianity by means of deaf and dumb bazaars, balls for blind institutions, and private theatricals for an orphan asylum. This devotion, made easy to the lightest disposition, is not, perhaps, a bad theory,--at least, it does not come amiss to an age which likes to attack its gravest ills in a playful spirit, to treat consumption with cough lozenges, and even moderate the excesses of insanity by soft music. There is another good feature, too, in the practice: it furnishes occupation and employment to a large floating class which,' for the interest and comfort of society, it is far better should be engaged in some pursuit, than left free to the indulgence of censorious tastes and critical habits. Lady Lendrick lived a sort of monarch amongst these. She was the patroness of this, the secretary of that, and the corresponding member of some other society. Never was an active intelligence more actively occupied; but she liked it all, for she liked power, and, strange as it may seem, there is in a small way an exercise of power even in these petty administrations. Loud, bustling, overbearing, and meddlesome, she went everywhere, and did everything. The only sustaining hope of those she interfered with was that she was too capricious to persist in any system of annoyance, and was prone to forget to-day the eternal truths she had propounded for reverence yesterday.