Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling.

Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say.

She was very showy, but she was not genuine: she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness.

She was not good; she was not original: she used to repeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own.

She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her.