Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/769

Rh and politeness of a court; but she learned no more than the real elegancies of grandeur. She was very remote from extravagance in habit. The labours of the toilette consumed very little of her time: she justly despised the art of dress and ornament, and endeavoured to infuse the same contempt of them into all her acquaintance; yet without falling into the other extreme of indecent negligence.

She had the happiest command over her passions; and maintained a constant calmness of temper, and sweetness of disposition, that could not be ruffled with adverse incidents, or soured by the approach of old age; scarcely ever discovering any anger, except on occasions, when some degree of indignation is not only irreproachable, but truly deserves the name of commendable and virtuous zeal. Scandal and detraction appeared to her extreme inhumanity, which no charms of wit and politeness could make tolerable. In a letter to an old friend, she says, "I can appeal to you, if you ever knew me make an envious, or an ill-natured reflection on any person on earth." If she was forced to be present at such kind of conversation, she had sometimes (when the freedom might decently be used) the courage openly to condemn it, and always the generosity to undertake the defence of the absent, when unjustly accused, and to extenuate even their real faults and errors. She had few equals in conversation.

The native grandeur of her soul, preserved it from a fondness for any kind of luxury, judging it much beneath the dignity of a being possessed of reason, and born for immortality. Play, she believed, at best was but an art of losing time, and forgetting to think, and therefore never learned any game, however