"How do you do, my dear child?" said old Lady Burlington, examining me from head to foot with deliberate scrutiny, when I went yesterday to deliver her a little packet from Madame de la Vauguyon. "I am examining to see whether there is anything about you new and striking enough to make you worthy of a very, very récherché little dinner I give tomorrow. We are sadly in want of something new this season. The saints, you know, are quite out of fashion. That sad business of the dear good doctor's threw them into mauvaise odeur; and now, scarcely a soul one knows goes to the Lock, except the old Marchioness who is imbécile, and the two old Lady Jigamaree's, who can't afford an Opera-box this year,― and want amusement. I have nothing young and pretty on my list, just now, that satisfies me. Mrs. Crowhurst is grown too shocking. People won't meet her. Are we likely to have any good foreigners from Paris?"

"Princess Dragonitski talks of coming."

"Don't let her think of such a thing! She was worn threadbare before she went away."

“And there is a very pretty Princess Zabuschka, who will be here soon; a Pole, and who, unlike the Poles one finds and expects to find, is enormously rich. Her emeralds alone are said to be worth several millions of francs."

Say guineas wherever you talk about her, and I will invite her the day she arrives to all my parties for the season!→ She will be the very thing for me. Is there a Prince?"

"Two or three, I believe; c'est à dire that, selon la mode de son pays, she has divorced several times."

"Charming, charming!-almost as good as the Duchess of

at Vienna, qui se ruine en maris. Sit down, then, at that little table, and write me a pretty little note, to be given to Princess Zabuschka the moment she arrives."

"But I know neither when she will arrive nor where." "Never mind, it will be better to have the invitation ready, and all such people go to Grillon's. Don't touch those new pens, they are for ornament. You will find some mended ones in the drawer. My page mends me a dozen every morning before breakfast, while he is learning his catechism. There now direct it, Madame la Princesse Ramboosko.' Why do you fold your notes in that odious way? I never open notes folded that odious way. No one folds notes that odious way but Lady Hoogley and a vulgar niece of mine, (what is the woman's name?) Lady Thingumee in Brook Street. Good morning, my dear, you can leave the note for me at Grillon's as you go past."

And thus, young and old, nay, and aged, are steeped to the

lips in the same levity in which I left them immersed. Reform, revolutions, cholera, nothing seems to touch the giddy throng which, every spring, bursts forth like the butterflies into the sunshine of the season!

Last night, I proposed to Armine to accompany me to-day on a visit to our friend, Lady Southam; but she pleaded an engagement, without acquainting me, according to her usual custom, with its nature. My curiosity excited by her reserve, I condescended to inquire whither she was going; and to my surprise, she looked towards Herbert, and answered evasively, "She was going to set her husband down at his banker's, in Lombard Street;" as if his own cabriolet could not have set Sir Henry down; or even his wife's carriage, without compelling her to a tedious drive along Cheapside.

About four o'clock, as I returned from Isabella's, who made me a proposal about presenting Armine to the Queen, which rendered an answer from my sister indispensable, I drove to Mivart's; and there sat her ladyship, quietly and calmly reading "Trevelyan," a book as graceful, gentle, and ladylike as herself.

I delivered my message, without seeming to notice her inconsistency; but in the course of conversation, it appeared that though Sir Henry was gone to the city, she had been to visit old Lady Hartston, at Kensington Gore. Now why should the Herberts have made a mystery to me of this visit? What interest have I in knowing or not knowing that the formal old dowager is come to town? I was almost angry, but said not a syllable respecting this precious mystery, lest I should vex my sister.

Just returned from a round of shopping with the Herberts, to inspect the furniture about to be despatched to Trentwood Park. Some twenty years ago, I fancy, an idea of refinement was attached to the vocation of a man of taste. Virtù was then esteemed an accomplishment; and to furnish a house with elegance, a feat as meritorious as to paint a good picture, or indite an essay in the Edinburgh Review. Times are strangely altered. Virtù is now as purchasable a commodity as the vases, statues, or antique hangings it serves to discriminate; half the upholsterers, carpet, china, or bronze manufacturers we visited to-day have adopted a jargon par roted from the cast-off phrases of Beckford and Hope, which they apply à tort et à travers in a style highly amusing. Fonthill was, in short, a sort of "National Virtù Institution," where people were inoculated gratis.

It is singular enough, by the way, that the mysteries of this new faith should have been promulgated in England by the

two most imaginative and forcible fictionists of the day-the authors of" Vathek" and "Anastasius."

It must be admitted, however, that these ornamental departments are wonderfully improved. Nothing could be more rich, more massive, than everything selected by Herbert for his library and dining-room. And libraries and dining-rooms, by the way, are departments of luxury peculiarly English. On the continent, they are simple, even to rudeness; the splendours of a great mansion being confined to the salon, with its gorgeous suite of hangings, fauteuils, sofas, and divans, whence an unmatching chair or footstool, such as our egotistical love of comfort introduces into even the finest of English drawing-rooms, would be rejected as a barbarism.

At present I find people less infatuated here with the Gothic furniture, and decorations in the style of la rénaissance, which prevail in all the newly finished mansions of the Chaussée d'Antin; but these, as one of the Virtù-mongers assured us this morning, require to be "in such classical keeping," "in such well-studied tone," that it is dangerous to attempt them unless in the highest state. For my own part I consider such decorations most absurd when applied to the modern temple of Mammon of a Rothschild or a Goldsmidt; while in the palace of Fontainebleau, recently restored à la moyen age, the illusion is complete. Hartston Abbey, by the way, would produce a splendid effect, if refurnished by a judicious person in the style of la rénaissance.

Herbert seems to have spared no cost or care in the arrangement of his house; but it seems that Sir Robert Herbert left a considerable sum in ready money, expressly bequeathed by his father for the express purpose of refurnishing Trentwood Park, which he wanted spirit to apply to its destination. The place will be in complete order before our arrival.

Yesterday, while the Herberts were sitting here, the Duke of Merioneth made his appearance, and addressed me with so much brotherly ease and cordiality, that I experienced not the slightest embarrassment at meeting him again.

"You are come at last, my dear Mrs. Delavel!” said he; "and before I have fully congratulated myself on your arrival, I learn that we are again to lose you. What period have you fixed for this ill-timed journey into Staffordshire?"

"We shall be in London ten days longer."

"Then you will at least give me the pleasure of seeing you, with Sir Henry and Lady Herbert, at dinner, previously to your departure? My mother would be much disappointed, were Mrs. Delavel, whom she so greatly admires, to pass through London without gratifying her by an interview."

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And it is accordingly settled that on Monday next we dine at Merioneth House.

"So, Harriet!" cried Herbert, the moment the Duke had quitted the room, "after all, the report that reached us from Paris was only one of the mysterious fabrications of that wonder-mongering fellow, Algernon Carrington?"

"What report?"

"That you had refused the Duke of Merioneth, and a jointure of thirty thousand a year."

"A jointure of thirty thousand a year! How could you suppose me so insensible!" said I, trying to laugh off his accusation. "What woman of your acquaintance but would marry Blue Beard himself on such a temptation?"

"To say the truth, I acquitted you. But the thing was talked of one day at the Club; and after Carrington had been rolling his eyes, shaking his head, and looking as mysterious as a high priest of Bel and the Dragon, Hartston observed, that nothing could be more probable; he knew the Duke to be a great admirer of Mrs. Delavel, but that it did not follow that Mrs. Delavel should be a great admirer of the Duke. All the world cried out, as you did just now, that not a woman breathing, from Mrs. Hannah More to Mrs. Fry, but was an admirer of Strawberry leaves with a fortune of a hundred thousand a year. But I perceive, by the Duke's manner, that the whole story was a fabrication-that you are a less philosophical lady than Hartston chose to suppose you; and I shall quiz him without mercy on his credulity."

It might, perhaps, be Herbert's intention to pique me by this threat into declaring the real state of the case; but I had sufficient command over myself to keep the Duke's secret and my own.

The Clackmannans are arrived, and it seems to require the exercise of all the Marchioness's good breeding to render her tolerably courteous towards myself. I met her at Lady Cecilia's, where a stormy explanation had taken place between the sisters. The Clackmannans are, if possible, more opposed than ever to the match; but Lady Alicia's health has become extremely delicate, and the parents, terrified for their darling, are willing to sacrifice their own authority and ambition for her sake; they have, in short, pledged their word that the marriage shall take place at the expiration of a year, provided the young people continue in the same mind; and, in the interim, Alicia and Clarence are freely permitted to correspond. Lady Clackmannan evidently looks upon me as one of the facilitators of the mischief; and Isabella Southam informed me yesterday, that whenever I am talked of, she ex

presses her opinion that "Mrs. Delavel is a romantic, flighty young woman. I suppose she has taken care to communicate these notions to her friend, Lord Hartston.

In the midst of all these family disputes, poor Cecilia has got a learned Pundit from the continent upon her hands, who is, just now, terribly à charge. I found him sitting with her yesterday, she looking like a tortoise in a menagerie, upon which some monster of a keeper has planted himself for the admiration of visiters-all shell, and not a glimpse of head discernible! Her faculties seemed actually ecrasé, benumbed, overpowered, by the weight of so prodigious a biped.

"People send one over these kind of creatures without the least consideration," said she, after his departure," and what on earth is one to do with them? Their letter of introduction contains an allusion to their celebrated works, (of which one has probably never heard a word before,) enabling one to get tolerably through a first visit; but after having expressed our delight and gratitude at the honour of making the acquaintance of an individual so eminent, and invited him to a dinner, where, in all probability, he bites his bread and spits under the tablecloth, one really cannot be expected to weary oneself with the rationalities indispensable to avoid making a figure in the note-book which the eminent individual is cramming with items, to be expanded into two quarto volumes of prose when he shall return to Greenland, or Tobolsk, or Timbuctoo, or New York, or the Ultima Thule, wherever it may be, to which the travels of the learned Pundit are to yield enlightenment. Besides, whom is one to invite to one's house to meet such a prodigy? The conversation-men like well enough to meet him once, in order to be wise or witty at his expense at the next half-dozen places they dine at; but when his face comes to be known at ministerial parties, Kensington Palace, and Lansdowne House, as the great Professor So-and-so, come to England to write a book,' one might as well ask people to come and meet a nouveau debarqué from Grand Cairo, when the plague (the eighth plague) is raging in Egypt."

"Poor dear Cis!” cried I; "and so you are really under sentence to let this Solon of the snows come and prose to you about prison discipline and national debt!"

"Exactly. At first the man talked to me rationally enough of society, literature, and the arts; but I saw he was pumping for his book, and so diverted the conversation to subjects on which I must infallibly talk nonsense, utterly useless to him."

I recommended her to make the monster over at once to old Lady Burlington, by persuading her that his skin is tattooed, or that he breakfasts upon snail broth; after which he