pendules, and well-bound books, surrounded her; every thing was récherché.

But it was her dress-though only a morning one, so inimitably put on, and so gracefully adapted to the airiness of her shape, and the unaffected, I had almost said, the careless grace of her movements-that most fixed me. This dress, or rather the grace with which it was worn, were I to try a hundred years, I never could describe. Luckily, it has been done inimitably already, by one who must have drawn it from the Lady Hungerford of his time, aided by the charm of his own imagination :"Give me a look, give me a face,

That makes simplicity a grace;

Robes loosely flowing, hair as free ;—

Such sweet neglect more taketh me,

Than all the adulteries of art,

That strike mine eye but not my heart."

In this apparently sweet neglect, but real propriety of dress, Lady Hungerford seemed an enchantress in her faery palace. How different from any thing I had ever seen in the common-place life I had led, confined, with the one exception of Foljambe Park, to Oxford, or my own homely home. To be sure, Foljambe Park was rich and imposing, and Bertha herself a sweet daughter of elegance; but her's was the elegance of nature alone; Lady Hungerford's, of nature united with just so much art as could supply ornament where it might be wanted, and no more.

She received me with that genuine politeness, equally removed from ceremony and familiarity, which, from putting you at your ease, has been called artificial good-nature, but here the goodnature seemed innate.

"I am obliged to you, Mr. De Clifford," said she, "for this visit, for, exclusive of Lord Castleton being so interested about you, you are the friend of those dear friends of mine, the Hastings, and also of another old friend, Mr. Granville, for whom I have great respect; nay, I also have had the honour of knowing, and being in my girlhood very much afraid of, that 'potent, grave, and reverend signor,' Mr. Fothergill, when he was the inmate of Lord Castleton, and who, I believe, was your tutor. Thus, then, you must think yourself any thing but an absolute stranger."

This seemed charmingly frank, and I returned my acknowledgments as well as I could, and said something about condescension, when she stopt me short, and said with animation,

"Condescension is a word which I neither like nor admit, except on high days and holidays, or at court, where every thing is sophisticated. Now, I have been told that you are any thing but sophisticated that Nature is your goddess-and that, at present at least, you are not able to call either persons or things but by their right names. I own this to me is a phenomenon which I seldom see,

though it pleases me when I do. But as I have been told, too, that you are very proud, I am sure you would wish to discard condescension from your vocabulary; so we will have no more of it."

All this while I was standing, and she went on therefore:

"Now sit down and talk to me, not as a fine lady, as perhaps I have been represented to you, but as one who loves ingenuousness wherever it can be found; so be as ingenuous as you please. To be so myself, however, I must tell you (here she looked at her pendule) that I have just one quarter of an hour, and no more, to give you, for I have an appointment at three with a very great lady who waits for nobody, and which, therefore, I must attend."

Who would not be encouraged by such a speech, and such demeanour? and yet the very frankness of it abashed me; for it seemed to interdict all common-place matters, and I knew not enough of her, or perhaps was too desirous to say something agreeable, to know where to begin.

She saw this, and was probably amused, for she said, in a rallying tone,

"Come; why don't you take me at my word, for I know you can? You would not be so silent if you were either at Foljambe Park, or with your friend Mr. Granville."

At this I felt myself reddening uncomfortably, and stammered out,

"Though your ladyship will not permit the word condescension, I may at least say you are very good, which I am sure I feel you to be."

"I know not what you call good," replied she; "but I have no scruple to say that Lord Castleton's and Mr. Granville's account of you, to say nothing of Mr. Hastings (O! how I waited to hear his daughter joined with him, but in vain), has given me an interest about you. I hear you are very romantic, though very natural; very proud, though very humble; in short, a contradiction, and I love contradictions, at least if no more than what I was wrapt up in when you were announced, in an author who I am also told you revere as a demi-god, and can say him by heart."

At this she took up the play she was busy with on my arrival, and pointed out the passage that then had so much engaged her―

"O! thou goddess,

Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon'st
In these two princely boys! They are as gentle
As zephyr blowing below the violet,

Not wagging his sweet head: and yet as rough,
Their royal blood enchaf'd, as the rudest wind,
That by the top doth take the mountain pine,
And makes him stoop to the vale."

She read this with precision and feeling, adding, "but I must give you a various reading upon this,

proposed by Mr. Granville (for it was he who applied this passage to you), and said that for royal blood,' we must read De Clifford blood.' Is it so ?"

Though all this was very personal, I cannot say but I was charmed. I was pleased with the mere thought that I was of sufficient consequence for her to be occupied about me, and still more with her manner of letting me know it. I saw in her a woman of the very first breeding in the country; full of the most agreeable qualities, and, withal, the intimate friend of a person I had adored but despaired of; and yet condescending (for I must use the word) to be pleased in making a comparatively humble creature pleased with himself.

Her confidence excited mine; I threw off my constraint, and my mind gave itself up to the pleasure which a participation of congenial sentiments, when inequality is forgotten, never fails to produce.

This congeniality was here called forth by the play from which she had quoted the lines which she said Granville had applied to me; and, once upon Cymbeline, we soon fell upon other passages, and I had the happiness of finding that all I said of the beautiful character of Imogen met her own feelings in every point; and when the pendule struck three, she seemed sorry, saying, with peculiar grace, she was not surprised at all that Granville and Miss Hastings had said of me.