Yet so it is.

As in the latter you have certain known quantities given by which you are to find a quantity unknown, so in a lady you have the hand, the foot, the mouth, &c., apparent; and 'tis only by calculation, now that modern dresses are made so full, that you can arrive at a just estimate of her approach to total perfection.

All good arithmeticians, as they scrutinised the outward and the visible of Isabel Revel, were perfectly assured as to her quotient.

But if I talked for hours, I could say no more than that she was one of those ideal images created in the dream of youth and poetry, fairly embodied in flesh and blood.

As her father had justly surmised, could she have been persuaded to have tried her fortune on the stage, she had personal attractions, depth of feeling, and vivacity of mind to have rendered her one of the very first in a profession, to excel in which there is, perhaps, more correct judgment and versatility of talent required than in any other, and would have had a fair prospect of obtaining that coronet which has occasionally been the reward of those fair dames who "stoop to conquer." Mr Revel, who had been made acquainted with the customs on board of East India ships, had been introduced to Mrs Ferguson, and had requested her to take upon herself the office of _chaperon_ to his daughters, during the passage: a nominal charge indeed, yet considered to be etiquette.