LAURENCE OLIPHANT'S FIRST WIFE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2635, 1 June 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

LAURENCE OLIPHANT'S FIRST WIFE.

I kind it difficult to give in words any fit desciplion of lliu fascinating and delightful woman w lio was Laurence Olijiitant'd wife. Tlie dark and vivacious beauty of her youth could only, I think, have hcen enhanced, in expression at Ica-t, by all the. experiences she had gone through, She xvas now at the full height of life, the mezzo del caminin. and a little worn with delicate health and many

labours, but so sweet, so bright, so gay in her profound seriousness, so tender in her complete independence, that all the charms of paradox were added to tho»e of nature. She had tho {rift (which is an inheritance r.nil special endowment of

some well-bred English women) of certain soft eloquence and command < perfect wmds which was delightful t

listen to—like itm-ic, but better that: mu-iu to ears u.(instructed in that art. Her husband was a brilliant conversati'iimlist, but she was fmiriethiiiu- more. Her beautiful sentences Unwed like tho easiest, of chatter, her sweet speech, in which most keen critic could not have found au inappropriate or misplaced word, seemed simple as the utterances of a child. She hid caught in America, with

her line musical ear, a slight accent, which was amusing and piquant in an Englishwoman, thouuh perhaps in itself scarcely delightful to English oars; and the extraordinary mixture in her of the finest culture in the Old World and the freedom and strange experiences of the New—the

atter a en, ni red not in sophisticated places where New York or Boston holds the mirror up to London and Paris, but in the Far West, and in the primitive country districts, where all is individual and strange —was more fascinating, amusing, and curious, than words can say. She was in all her beliefs and sentiments a

mystic of tho mystic, out-stripping even her husband in devotion to the mysterious faith which had held them in such complete subjection, and perhaps with a greutsr instinct of progress, of pushing t! 8 e principles in'.o fu ther development than he had at least as yet shown.—Mrs Uliphant, iu Blackwood's Magazine.