WE have known many prettier girls than Mary Gresley, and many handsomer women—but we never knew girl or woman gifted with a face which in supplication¹ was more suasive, in grief more sad, in mirth more merry. It was a face that compelled sympathy, and it did so with the conviction on the mind of the sympathiser that the girl was altogether unconscious of her own power. In her intercourse² with us there was, alas³! much more of sorrow than of mirth, and we may truly say that in her sufferings we suffered; but still there came to us from our intercourse with her much of delight mingled⁴ with the sorrow; and that delight arose, partly no doubt from her woman’s charms, from the bright eye, the beseeching⁵ mouth, the soft little hand, and the{4} feminine grace of her unpretending garments; but chiefly, we think, from the extreme humanity of the girl. She had little, indeed none, of that which the world calls society, but yet she was pre-eminently social. Her troubles were very heavy, but she was making ever an unconscious effort to throw them aside, and to be jocund⁶ in spite of their weight. She would even laugh at them, and at herself as bearing them. She was a little fair-haired creature, with broad brow and small nose and dimpled chin, with no brightness of complexion⁷, no luxuriance of hair, no swelling⁸ glory of bust⁹ and shoulders; but with a pair of eyes which, as they looked at you, would be gemmed¹⁰ always either with a tear or with some spark of laughter, and with a mouth in the corners of which was ever

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