ABSTRACT
The arrival of the great Miss Mountain at Woodlands, enabled Matilda to convince herself, by actual observation, that the Countess had not exaggerated in the description she had given of her. Indeed, with Miss Mountain, the use of that figure in rhetoric was almost impossible. She was, herself, the very personification of Hyperbole. Her features, form, and mind, seemed all, from nature’s hand, exaggerated. Her figure rose above the size of most men; and her carriage was lofty; but owed its dignity more to a certain squareness and undeviating erectness, than to the graceful easy line of real majesty. Her eyes which were large and very dark, gained much in animation, if not in fierceness, from the extreme vividness of her complexion; a vividness that excited, in most who saw her for the first time, the suspicion – more than the suspicion, of art.
