before it in a clear, and a humorous light, such as only a
disposition overflowing with warm affection and with the energy of
kindness, could have prevented from bordering upon censoriousness.
She had imagination, but it was not such as to make an illusion of
the present, or to interfere with her almost satirical good sense.
Happily, religion and its earthly manifestation--charity regulated
her, taught her to fear to judge lest she should be judged,
strengthened her naturally fond affections, and tempered the keenness
that disappointment might soon have turned to sourness. The tongue,
the temper, and the judgment knew their own tendencies, and a guard
was set over them; and if the sentinel were ever torpid or deceived,
repentance paid the penalty.

She had not long seen her husband at home before she had
involuntarily completed her view of his character. Nature must have
designed him for a fellow of a college, where, apart from all cares,
he might have collected fragments of forgotten authors, and
immortalized his name by some edition of a Greek Lyric poet, known by
four poems and a half, and two-thirds of a line quoted somewhere
else. In such a controversy, lightened by perpetually polished
poems, by a fair amount of modern literature, select college
friendships, and methodical habits, Edmund Kendal would have been in
his congenial element, lived and died, and had his portrait hung up
as one of the glories of his college.

But he had been carried off from school, before he had done more than
prove his unusual capacity. All his connexions were Indian, and his
father, who had not seen him since his earliest childhood, offered
him no choice but an appointment in the civil service. He had one
stimulus; he had seen Lucy Meadows in the radiant glory of girlish