and the arts, whom I had already seen in fashionable parties, both at dinners and assemblies.

Lady Hungerford would not admit even this as a passport.

"Men of genius certainly, and very respectable people," said she;" and if their object is to be enrolled in the legitimate ranks of real high life, deserving a better fate; for they are, for the most part, mere lions, who have their day, and, unless for something more than their literature, will be soon forgotten in their persons, though their works may survive. With this class of persons a single piece of awkwardness, an exhibition of mauvaise honte (to which most of them, from want of breeding, are liable); even an ill-cut coat; in short, the least vulgarity impedes their advance, if it do not absolutely annihilate them.”

I now felt repulsed right and left, and asked if personal beauty, manners, grace, and accomplishments, would not avail?

"Manners," said Lady Hungerford, “will undoubtedly do much, combined with other requisites; but even they, not of themselves alone, The manners of a man utterly of no consequence, will be of themselves worse than of no consequence, for they may seem to claim a distinction not legitimate. Beauty may create admiration with the men, and envy with the women, but will not confer the privileges of noblesse we speak of. Miss Pidcock was beautiful as a Houri, and as such was intended to

acquire fashion herself, and bestow it upon her sisters. But her name was against her; she was produced by a vulgar aunt; Lord Petronius, the arbiter elegantiarum for the time being, pronounced her a milk-maid, and there was an end of her."

“ Perhaps,” said I," she was not graceful, and I own all the beauty in the world, without grace, could never win me."

"Winning," replied my shrewd patroness, goodnaturedly laughing, "is not the question, but whether grace, even the most exquisite, will alone raise a person into fashion who has no other pretension to it. Not only it will not (for how many very graceful persons do we not see neglected though looked at), and, on the other hand, how many personifications of clumsiness (large limbs, high shoulders, and enormous bon point), do we not behold in our best drawing-rooms? What ex hibitions are there also of scraggy, flat, ill-formed machines, inrolled in, and constituting what is called, the very best company! These you will meet not only in the crême, but in the crême de la crême, as it has been called, of high society."

"Good heavens !" cried I, astonished at these difficulties, “if all these qualifications fail, what will succeed ?"

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Nothing," answered the lady, "but, in addition to the qualifications we have been canvassing, that indescribable something which we know not

what to call, though we daily and hourly see, and fall down before, and worship it the moment it appears, and yet can never exactly say why. Perhaps Hannah More characterized it, when she wrote the line,

'All Levison's sweetness, and all Beaufort's grace.'

But even this grace and sweetness must be coupled with Levison and Beaufort's rank, blood, and connexions, before it can succeed. Perhaps it is a gift from nature, that rich gift to the Seymours, the Somersets, the Fitzroys, or the Gowers, which a nabob, and a nabob's wife, would give half India to be able to acquire. But still we know not in language to describe it, and hence, I said, it was indescribable."

"Surely," said I, struck with this ebullition, "if you can so well exemplify this something, so powerful as well as desirable, though it have no name, it cannot be so indescribable as you have called it. One who understands so well what it is not, must know what it is, and therefore can tell at least of what it is composed.'

"No!" answered the lady again; "for its ingredients are as heterogeneous as numerous; by no means producing the same effect upon all persons, nor always upon the same person. They cannot, therefore, be classed, or depended upon. They may be efficient in one, inefficient in another; attract here, repel there; conciliate, or affront;

be admired, or hated ;-according as a combination of fortunate or untoward events may prevail among different parties.

"One reason for this may be, that good breeding may be of two sorts-one original, the other imitative. Hence the manners of the old nobility are rarely caught by new men, from the consciousness of superiority in the former, and of inferiority in the latter, imbibed from their cradles. Much depends also upon convention, a knowledge of which, and strict observance of its laws, are absolutely ne

cessary.

"Would that I could obtain this knowledge," said I.

“What you may do when you have been some time at Court, I know not," returned Lady Hungerford. "At present you have too much simplicity, and are too natural, to take a degree in fashion. If you saw a beautiful woman, you would stare at her; if she was your mistress, you would shew pleasure; if the house was on fire, you would shew fear."

"And good cause too," said I.

"Aye; there it is," observed my preceptress. “I

said

you were too natural. I am afraid you will never do, and I shall report you to Lord Castleton accordingly."

Thus disported this lively lady on a subject which had often puzzled me, and wiser heads than

mine, but which she seemed to have considered as philosophically as playfully.

The conference was now about to end; but of a sudden it occurred to me that we had not touched upon a very important part of the subject, and that it was quite as necessary for one studying les usages to know the legitimate meaning of the opposite to fashion, as of fashion itself.

I propounded this, and asked, though we might not be able exactly to tell in what fashion consisted, whether it might not assist the inquiry to define its opposite-vulgarity.

"Scientifically put," said she. "I find you have not been at Oxford for nothing. In truth, the question is most apposite to that we have been treating; certainly, much connected with it; and it seems to me that it is not quite so difficult; for though we cannot easily manage to say more than what fashion is not, we can pretty well tell what vulgarity is."

"This is what I most devoutly wish to understand,” said I, “though you will pardon me if I venture to doubt your powers of instruction here, from the impossibility of your knowing any thing of such a subject.”

"A very well-intended compliment," observed the lady; "I see you have already endeavoured to profit by one of my precepts, and, as I told you to do, have tried at least to wrap it well up. After