She is perfectly grand in her velvet robes, dark plume, and crown-like turban. The lady of Ellrington House, the wife of Northangerland, the prima donna of the Angrian Court, the most learned woman of her age, the modern Cleopatra, the Verdopolitan de Staël: in a word, Zenobia Percy! Who would think that that grand form of feminine majesty could launch out into the unbridled excesses of passion in which her ladyship not unfrequently indulges? There is fire in her eyes, and command on her brow; and some touch of a pride that would spurn restraint in the curl of her rich lip. But all is so tempered with womanly dignity that it would seem as if neither fire nor pride nor imperiousness could awaken the towering fits of ungoverned and frantic rage that often deform her beauty. Her hands, look at them, they are well formed and small, white and sparkling with rings; is it natural that such hands should inflict the blows that sometimes tingle from them? I think not; but my scarlet ears and aching bones have more than once borne incontestable witness how the case stands! The truth is her fingers though slender are long and like those of Zamorna, and like his they possess more vigour than their fragile structure would seem to indicate. She can spar, I verily believe, with her own husband, one of the best boxers on record, though now a little disabled by a tormenting complaint from long-continued exertion. Her employment, however, as here represented is of a higher order than pugilistic achievement. She leans on a large clasped volume, another of equal size lies open before her, and: one taper forefinger directs the spectator’s attention to the page while her eye looks into his with an earnest and solemn air as if she were warning him of the mighty treasures contained in the maxims of ancient lore to which she points. As I turn from this pictured representation of the countess I must say she is a noble creature both in mind and body, though full of the blackest defects: a flawed diamond; a magnificent landscape trenched with drains; virgin gold basely adulterated with brass; a beautiful intellectual woman, but an infidel.