Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/21

Rh the moralizings of the school-girl of seventeen about the ennui and unsatisfactoriness of the great world of which she knew so little, yet the language and versification make it a really remarkable achievement for a girl of her age, and it procured her some consideration in society.

In spite of ill-health and constantly-recurring severe headaches, probably nervous, she was evidently a very pretty girl, with delicate refined features, rather sharply cut, and beautiful keen, dark eyes, which were enhanced in brilliancy by the whiteness of her powdered hair. Her conversation was charming. She was just the sort of young creature whose fresh, innocent intelligence is specially captivating to the elderly men with whom she converses, fearless of all idea of coquetry. Once, when very unwell, she so delighted her physician by her discussion of some book that he entirely forgot that she was his patient, and, after taking leave, returned with "And how are you, my poor child?"

She studied Latin, Spanish, and Italian, and exercised herself in poetical translations, most of which she afterwards destroyed as worthless; but she attained to such facility that at an Italian opera, to gratify the friend beside her, she scribbled an English version, which was at once printed by the local newspaper.

The other sisters enjoyed her successes without a shade of jealousy. They seemed to have equalled her in all but depth of learning and faculty of composition,