Her descriptions, then, of natural scenery are what
they should be, and all they should be.
Where delineation of human character is concerned, the case is
different. I am bound to avow that she had scarcely more practical
knowledge of the peasantry amongst whom she lived, than a nun has
of the country people who sometimes pass her convent gates. My
sister's disposition was not naturally gregarious; circumstances
favoured and fostered her tendency to seclusion; except to go to
church or take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the
threshold of home. Though her feeling for the people round was
benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, with very
few exceptions, ever experienced. And yet she know them: knew
their ways, their language, their family histories; she could hear
of them with interest, and talk of them with detail, minute,
graphic, and accurate; but WITH them, she rarely exchanged a word.
Hence it ensued that what her mind had gathered of the real
concerning them, was too exclusively confined to those tragic and
terrible traits of which, in listening to the secret annals of
every rude vicinage, the memory is sometimes compelled to receive
the impress.
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