But soon I was charmed, unaware, with the sagacity of her sallies, the
profound thoughts carelessly dropped by her on transient topics,
the breadth and richness of culture manifested in her allusions
or quotations, her easy comprehension of new views, her just
discrimination, and, above all, her _truthfulness_. "Truth at all
cost," was plainly her ruling maxim. This it was that made her
criticism so trenchant, her contempt of pretence so quick and stern,
her speech so naked in frankness, her gaze so searching, her whole
attitude so alert. Her estimates of men, books, manners, events, art,
duty, destiny, were moulded after a grand ideal; and she was a severe
judge from the very loftiness of her standard. Her stately deportment,
border though it might on arrogance, but expressed high-heartedness.
Her independence, even if haughty and rash, was the natural action
of a self-centred will, that waited only fit occasion to prove itself
heroic. Her earnestness to read the hidden history of others was
the gauge of her own emotion. The enthusiasm that made her speech
so affluent, when measured by the average scale, was the unconscious
overflow of a poetic temperament.
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