26/93 It is only justice to her to say that she treated her literary friends with constant kindness and the most unselfish attentions. They and their wives and children (when they had any) were received at her house in the country, and entertained there for weeks without any airs of patronage, and with a spirit of genuine benevolence as well as hospitality."* -- * The Greville Memoirs, vol.iii.pp. 109, 110. As Carlyle's wife the latter would doubtless have been welcome enough at the Grange. Being much cleverer than Lady Ashburton, she seemed to dispute a supremacy which had not hitherto been challenged, and the relations of the two women were strained. |