Notes Of An Overland Journey Through France And Egypt To Bombay By The Late Miss Emma Roberts





















 -  She
had a true relish of all the little pleasures that promiscuous society
affords, and did not underrate those talents - Page 9
Notes Of An Overland Journey Through France And Egypt To Bombay By The Late Miss Emma Roberts - Page 9 of 154 - First - Home

Enter page number    Previous Next

Number of Words to Display Per Page: 250 500 1000

She Had A True Relish Of All The Little Pleasures That Promiscuous Society Affords, And Did Not Underrate Those Talents

Which are better fitted for the drawing-room than the study." Her warmth of heart and kindness of disposition, which

Co-operated with her good sense in thus removing all disagreeable points from her external character, made her the sincerest of friends, and ever ready to engage in any work of charity or benevolence.

It would be affectation to attempt in this slight Memoir to elaborate a picture of the intellectual character of Miss Roberts, cut off, as she has been, before that character had been fully developed. The works, upon which her reputation as a writer principally rests, are not, perhaps, of a quality which calls for any commanding powers of mind. Her business was with the surfaces of things; her skill consisted in a species of photography, presenting perfect fac-similes of objects, animate and inanimate, in their natural forms and hues. Deep investigations, profound reflections, and laboured and learned disquisitions, would have defeated the very object of her lively sketches, which was to make them, not only faithful and exact, but popular. Of her success in this design, the following testimony from a competent authority, the Calcutta Literary Gazette, is distinct and decisive; and with this extract we may fitly close our melancholy office: "Nothing can be more minute and faithful than her pictures of external life and manners. She does not, indeed, go much beneath the surface, nor does she take profound or general views of human nature; but we can mention no traveller, who has thrown upon the printed page such true and vivid representations of all that strikes the eye of a stranger. Her book, entitled Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan, is the best of its kind. Other travellers have excelled her in depth and sagacity of remark, in extent of information, and in mere force or elegance of style; but there is a vivacity, a delicacy, and a truth in her light sketches of all that lay immediately before her, that have never been surpassed in any book of travels that is at this moment present to our memory. She had a peculiar readiness in receiving, and a singular power of retaining, first impressions of the most minute and evanescent nature. She walked through a street or a bazaar, and every thing that passed over the mirror of her mind left a clear and lasting trace. She was thus enabled, even years after a visit to a place of interest, to describe every thing with the same freshness and fidelity as if she had taken notes upon the spot. They who have gone over the same ground are delighted to find in the perusal of her pages their own vague and half-faded impressions revived and defined by her magic glass, while the novelty and vividness of her foreign pictures make her home-readers feel that they are nearly as much entitled to be called travellers as the fair author herself."

[Footnote A:

Enter page number   Previous Next
Page 9 of 154
Words from 4467 to 4976 of 80716


Previous 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Next

More links: First 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
 110 120 130 140 150 Last

Display Words Per Page: 250 500 1000

 
Africa (29)
Asia (27)
Europe (59)
North America (58)
Oceania (24)
South America (8)
 

List of Travel Books RSS Feeds

Africa Travel Books RSS Feed

Asia Travel Books RSS Feed

Europe Travel Books RSS Feed

North America Travel Books RSS Feed

Oceania Travel Books RSS Feed

South America Travel Books RSS Feed

Copyright © 2005 - 2022 Travel Books Online