the Jew. But I could never commune with Lady Anne, for either she was up in the nursery, or Fowler was at her back in the drawing-room, or little Lady Anne was sitting upright on her stool at her mother's feet, whom I did not care to approach, and in whose presence I seldom ventured to speak-consequently my curiosity on this point had from that hour slumbered within me; but it was now wakened, upon my mother's proposing to present me to Lady Anne, and the pleasure of asking and the hope of obtaining an answer to my long-meditated question, was the chief gratification I promised myself from the renewal of our acquaintance with her ladyship.

CHAPTER VI.

My recollection of Lady de Brantefield proved wonderfully correct; she gave me back the image I had in my mind—a stiff, haughty-looking picture of a faded old beauty. Adhering religiously to the fashion of the times when she had been worshipped, she made it a point to wear the old head-dress exactly. She was in black, in a hoop of vast circumference, and she looked and moved as if her being Countess de Brantefield in her own right, and concentring in her person five baronies, ought to be for ever present to the memory of all mankind, as it was to her own.

My mother presented me to her ladyship. The ceremony of introduction between a young gentleman and an old lady of those times, performed on his part with a low bow and look of profound deference, on hers with backstepping-courtesy and bridled head, was very different from the nodding, bobbing trick of the present day. As soon as the finale of Lady de Brantefield's sentence touching honour, happiness, and family connexion would permit, I receded, and turned from the mother to the daughter, little Lady Anne Mowbray, a light fantastic figure, bedecked with "daisies pied," covered with a profusion of tiny French flowers, whose invisible wire stalks kept in perpetual motion as she turned her pretty" head from side to side. Smiling, sighing, tittering, flirting with the officers round her, Lady Anne appeared,

and seemed as if she delighted in appearing as perfect a contrast as possible to her august and formidable mother. The daughter had seen the ill effect of the mother's haughty demeanour, and, mistaking reverse of wrong for right, had given reserve and dignity to the winds. Taught by the happy example of Colonel Topham, who preceded me, I learned that the low bow would have been here quite out of place. The sliding bow was for Lady Anne, and the way was, to dash into nonsense with her directly, and full into the midst of nonsense I dashed. Though her ladyship's perfect accessibility seemed to promise prompt reply to any question that could be asked; yet the single one about which I felt any curiosity I could not contrive to introduce during the first three hours I was in her ladyship's company. There was such a quantity of preliminary nonsense to get through, and so many previous questions to be disposed of: for example, I was first to decide which of three colours I preferred, all of them pronounced to be the prettiest in the universe, boue de Paris, ail de l'empereur, and a suppressed sigh.

At that moment Lady Anne wore the suppressed sigh, but I did not know it-I mistook it for boue de Parisconceive my ignorance! No two things in nature, not a horse-chestnut and a chestnut-horse, could be more different.

Conceive my confusion! and Colonels Topham and Beauclerk standing by. But I recovered myself in public opinion, by admiring the slipper on her ladyship's little foot. Now I showed my taste, for this slipper had but the night before arrived express from Paris, and it was called a venez-y voir; and how a slipper, with a heel so high, and a quarter so low, could be kept on the foot, or how the fair could walk in it, I could not conceive, except by the spécial care of her guardian sylph.

After the venez-y voir had fixed all eyes as desired, the lady turning alternately to Colonels Topham and Beauclerk, with rapid gestures of ecstasy, exclaimed, "The pouf! the pouf! Oh! on Wednesday I shall have the pouf!"

Now what manner of thing a pouf! might be, I had not the slightest conception. "It requireth," said Bacon, "great cunning for a man in discourse to seem to know that which he knoweth not." Warned by boue de Paris, and the suppressed sigh, this time I found safety in silence.

I listened, and learned, first, that un pouf was the most charming thing in the creation; next that nobody upon earth could be seen in Paris without one; that one was coming from Mademoiselle Bertin, per favour of Miss Wilkes, for Lady Anne Mowbray, and that it would be on her head on Wednesday; and Colonel Topham swore there could be no resisting her ladyship in the pouf, she would look so killing.

"So killing," was the colonel's last.

I now thought that I had Lady Anne's ear to myself; but she ran on to something else, and I was forced to follow as she skimmed over fields of nonsense. At last she did stop to take breath, and I did get in my one question; to which her ladyship replied, "Poor Fowler frighten me? Lord! No. Like her oh! yes-dote upon Fowler! didn't you?—No, you hated her, I remember. Well, but I assure you, she's the best creature in the world; I could always make her do just what I pleased. Positively, I must make you make it up with her, if I can remember it, when she comes up to townshe is to come up for my birthday. Mamma, you know, generally leaves her at the Priory, to take care of all the old trumpery, and show the place-you know it's a show place. But I tell Colonel Topham, when I've a place of my own, I positively will have it modern, and all the furniture in the very newest style. I'm sick of old relicks! Natural, you know, when I have been having a surfeit all my life of old beds and chairs, and John of Gaunt, and the Black Prince. But the Black Prince, I remember, was always a vast favourite of yours. Well, but poor Fowler, you must like her, too-I assure you she always speaks with tenderness of you; she is really the best old soul! for she's growing oldish, but so faithful, and so sincere too. Only flatters mamma sometimes so, I can hardly help laughing in her face; but then you know mamma, and old ladies when they come to that pass, must be flattered to keep them up'tis but charitable-really right. Poor Fowler's daughter is to be my maid."

"I did not know Fowler had a daughter, and a daughter grown up."

"Nancy Fowler! not know! Oh! yes, quite grown up, fit to be married-only a year younger than I am. And there's our old apothecary in the country has taken such a fancy to her! But he's too old and wiggy-but

it would make a sort of lady of her, and her mother will have it so but she sha'n't-I've no notion of compulsion. Nancy shall be my maid, for she is quite out of the common style; can copy verses for one-I've no time, you know-and draws patterns in a minute. I declare I don't know which I love best-Fowler or Nancy-poor old Fowler I think. Do you know she says I'm so like the print of the queen of France. It never struck me; but I'll go and ask Topham."

I perceived that Fowler, wiser grown, had learned how much more secure the reign of flattery is than the reign of terror. She was now, as I found, supreme in the favour of both her young and old lady. The specimen I have given of Lady Anne Mowbray's conversation, or rather of Lady Anne's mode of talking, will, I fancy, be amply sufficient to satiate all curiosity concerning her ladyship's understanding and character. She had, indeed, like most of the young ladies her companions"no character at all."

Female conversation in general was at this time very different from what it is in our happier days. A few bright stars had risen, and shone, and been admired; but the useful light had not diffused itself. Miss Talbot's and Mrs. Carter's learning and piety, Mrs. Montague's genius, Mrs. Vesey's elegance, and Mrs. Boscawen's* polished ease," had brought female literature into fashion in certain favoured circles; but it had not, as it has now, become general in almost every rank of life. Young ladies had, it is true, got beyond the Spectator and the Guardian: Richardson's novels had done much towards opening a larger field of discussion. One of Miss Burney's excellent novels had appeared, and had made an era in London conversation; but still it was rather venturing out of the safe course for a young lady to talk of books, even of novels; it was not, as it is now, expected that she should know what is going on in the literary world. The Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, and varieties of literary and scientific journals, had not

"Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way."

Before there was a regular demand and an established market, there were certain hawkers and pedlers of liter

*See Bas-bleu.

ature, fetchers and carriers of bays, and at every turn copies of impromptus, charades, and lines by the honourable Miss C-, and the honourable Mrs. D-,were put into my hands by young ladies, begging for praise, which it was seldom in my power conscientiously to bestow. I early had a foreboding-one of my mother's presentiments that I should come to disgrace with Lady Anne Mowbray about some of these cursed scraps of poetry. Her ladyship had one-shall I say?—peculiarity. She could not bear that any one should differ from her in matters of taste; and though she regularly disclaimed being a reading lady, she was most assured of what she was most ignorant. With the assistance of Fowler's flattery, together with that of all the hangers-on at Brantefield Priory, her temper had been rendered incapable of bearing contradiction. But this defect was not immediately apparent: on the contrary, Lady Anne was generally thought a pleasant, good-humoured creature, and most people wondered that the daughter could be so different from the mother. Lady de Brantefield was universally known to be positive and prejudiced. Her prejudices were all old-fashioned, and ran directly counter to the habits of her acquaintance. Lady Anne's, on the contrary, were all in favour of the present fashion, whatever it might be, and ran smoothly with the popular stream. The violence of her temper could, therefore, scarcely be suspected, till something opposed the current a small obstacle would then do the businesswould raise the stream suddenly to a surprising height, and would produce a tremendous noise. It was my illfortune one unlucky day to cross Lady Anne Mowbray's humour, and to oppose her opinion. It was about a trifle; but trifles, indeed, made, with her, the sum of human things. She came one morning, as it was her custom, to loiter away her time at my mother's till the proper hour for going out to visit. For five minutes she sat at some fashionable kind of work-wafer work, I think it was called, a work which has been long since consigned to the mice; then her ladyship yawned, and exclaiming, "Oh, those lines of Lord Chesterfield's, which Colonel Topham gave me; I'll copy them into my album?-Mrs. Harrington, I lent it to you. Oh! here it is. Mr. Harrington, you will finish copying this for me. "" So I was set down to the album to copyAdvice to a Lady in Autumn.