should the antiquated invalid at Pumpwell know about such matters?

Your Papa took an interest in journalism; had dined with Mr. Barnes, of the Times; and Mr. Perry, of the Morning Chronicle. He used to live in the same house, in Tavistock Square, now inhabited, as your letters tell me, by Mr. Charles Dickens, the great novelist. Once, too, I think, at a public meeting, Sir Charles sat next to that atrocious Mr. Cobbett, who used to attack the aristocracy so shamefully in a paper called the Gridiron. Your dear Papa said that Mr. C. was a tall, hearty, farmer-looking man, in a pepperand-salt coat, drab shorts, top-boots, and a beautiful shirtfrill. He had a placid, beaming face, and a remarkably mild, intelligent eye, and did not in the least look like the demagogue, Jacobin, Radical, he was. So different do we seem from what we really are. Who would imagine, to look at his portrait, that Doctor Johnson ever made a joke? Does Lord John Russell, in the photographs they publish of him, look like a statesman? My dear, he more nearly resembles a parish clerk. I knew a young person once, who, in features and expression, was the very image of Raffaelle's Belle Jardinière. Child, she used to eat periwinkles with a pin, and drink Dublin stout out of the neck of a bottle; and, although her husband was a most respectable man, a partner in a London banking firm, she hadn't an H in her whole vocabulary. There is a man here, who comes round for subscriptions to the Cruel Islands Mission (Wantong branch), who has a head exactly like Roubiliac's bust of Shakspeare; and yet, I declare, he is a perfect ass.

As to these penny newspapers, I only mentioned them en passant: they never enter these doors. I take in the Times, and Shanko Fanko reads it to me daily; although I must say that I fail to recognise in the modern journal the respect for

authority and reverence for long-standing institutions which characterised the Times of old. Stay; wasn't it the Courier that was so respectable and Conservative a publication? At all events, skipping those dreary politics, and that seditious foreign intelligence-who wants to know what the banditti and the pifferari, and the Pope and the wicked Jesuits are doing in Central Italy ?-there is always a great deal of amusement in the supplement of the Times. So many people, every day, who want things, or are themselves wanted; and nobody ever seems to get what he wants! Then the "Furnished apartments," the "Board and residence," the "Sales by auction," the mysterious initials-there is more in those initials, I am sure, than meets the eye, and Government should look to the matter-and especially the "Births, deaths, and marriages." I am convinced, in my own mind, that not one person in a hundred looks into the Times supplement in quest of what he or she herself wants, but merely to ascertain what other people want. The supplement is all very well; but for real, solid yet refined, amusing yet instructive, reading give me the Morning Post. I love that elegant gazette. I think its editor ought to be knighted. I am sure he must live in the best society, and I only wish he would publish an edition of his journal for the élite, nicely printed on mauve paper, and perfumed with patchouli or wood violet. This week I have reason to love my dear Morning Post more than ever. Not only for its fashionable intelligence, not only for its marriages in high life, its arrivals at Claridge's Hotel, soirées dansantes, and its fêtes champêtres, but for the glowing description it gives of the first DRAWING-ROOM of the season, and the presentation at the Court of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria of my darling Louisa. To read these enchanting lines. among the presentations:

"Miss Chesterfield, by the Dowager Lady Coseymore." And again, among the general list of visitors :

"Misses Skimmington, Talbot de Tallboys, Van Yallagal, Montupperlip, (2), Wigglegrigg, Rumkinson, (3), CHESTERFIELD, Stiltonburgh."

To be twice mentioned in the Court Circular and the Morning Post! To be enumerated in the roll of the best and bravest and fairest cavaliers in England! The Stiltonburghs came over with the Conqueror; the founder of the Van Yallagal family was Governor of Batavia before he visited our shores in the train of William the Third; a Talbot de Tallboys signed Magna Charta; Sir Rindoff Stiltonburgh defended Cheseleigh House when it was besieged by Cromwell; the Skimmingtons once owned half the County Galway; there are two dormant peerages and one attainder in the Wigglegrigg family; the Montupperlips quarter the arms of Fortinbras and Fierabras; and the Rumkinsons, albeit a mere city family ab origine, are enormously wealthy, and the girls are sure to marry high up

in the House of Lords.

And to think of that dear, kind, thoughtful soul, Lady Coseymore, she who scarcely ever visits England, braving the perils of the ocean and coming to town expressly for the purpose of presenting the proud and happy, and I trust grateful Louisa Chesterfield to our beloved Sovereign. Ah! how I wish that Lady Coseymore were about to make a permanent stay in the metropolis! Ah! how I regret my cruel and hopeless captivity on this weary sofa, among these whistplaying, medicinal water-drinking Boeotians! I am afraid, my darling, that you are becoming too distinguée for Pagoda Square. (Carefully obliterate this paragraph in the very blackest of ink ere you show it to anybody.) The De Fytchetts are all very well; but, entre nous, Mr. de Fytchett

is only an employé. He went to the drawing-room, you say, as a Deputy Lieutenant. Yes, dear, certainly; but then, Amelia-Charlotte what is a Deputy Lieutenant after all? had a headache, and could not go. I dare say. Frederica de Fytchett had a swelled face and a gumboil, and cried her eyes out because in that condition she was not presentable, and because, I shrewdly suspect, my Lady Coseymore did not care very much about presenting her. Ferdinand was there of course, the vain puppy, in right of his uniform. He had stayed out dreadfully late the previous night, you tell me, Someplaying Pool at the Carambole Club. What is Pool? thing wicked and gambling and ruinous I am sure. Why doesn't that young man go to his regiment? Is he always having leave of absence? Oh! he is at Aldershott is he, and pops out of town now and then? Why are there not citadels and fortresses and things where young men in the army can keep guard, and lie on camp beds, and be shot if they do not know the countersign? In my time they used to send wild young men in the infantry to the West Indies, where they had good wholesome yellow fevers, or else to Ireland, where, I warrant, my Lord Lieutenant found plenty of work for them, in keeping the rebellious peasantry in order. I have no patience with bits of boys who play Pool and pop up from Aldershott, and swagger from St. James's Palace to their clubs, to show their ridiculous red tunics and flower-pot hats. Mr. Reginald Tapeleigh, I am informed, was not at the drawing-room, much to Miss Louisa's grief. My dear, he has no locus standi for all his fine connections. He is there, don't be angry--only a Government clerk. You say that you would have given anything to have seen his “fine martial figure among the glittering throng." Stuff and If his figure be "so fine and martial," why doesn't he enlist in the Life Guards; or, better still,

nonsense!