board; and of Pagoda Square, Knightsbridge, there shall be nothing left!

In my last epistle to you, Louisa, I offered you some little advice concerning persons whose acquaintance it would be expedient for you, as a young lady just entering life, to form; and I shall, as opportunity may serve, continue from time to time my counsel in this respect; but as a faithful guide, before he discourses to the intending traveller on the pleasant halting-places and shady retreats in the road he is about to traverse, should warn him against the precipices and miry places, the dismal ambuscades where devouring tigers or ruthless bandits may lie hidden, ready to spring on him, so do I think it necessary, at this early stage of our correspondence, to warn you against the people whom you ought not to know, or, if you are compelled to come into contact with them, to know only that you may avoid them.

The De Fytchetts, you say, see a great deal of company. I do not wonder at it. Amelia-Charlotte was always a pushing woman; and, although there is an indefinable something in her manner that will always prevent her acquiring truly aristocratic connections of the most elevated order, her acquaintance is, while miscellaneous, respectable; and had I placed you with friends whose circle, though more refined, was exclusive to isolation, you would have seen a better part of the world, but not so much of that world at large as, at your age, I should desire you to survey. And now, with the aid of the miroir face et nuque of your letters, let us glance, in all charity, but in a spirit of justice, at our excellent Amelia-Charlotte's visiting list.

Mr. de Fytchett has his friends, of course. You write that they are all stupid and prosy, say nothing at dinner, and go to sleep when they come up into the drawing-room afterwards. They are the very persons whom a girl actuated by a proper

ambition ought to know. These are the persons who have Only (and marriageable) sons, to whom they leave immense fortunes; and who sometimes, when childless, take fancies to pretty girls whose singing or playing tickles their palled old ears. Then they go home and make wills in their favour. "And they marry the pretty girls too, sometimes, mamma," I think I hear you say. Yes, Miss, they do; as my Lord Erskine did; as scores of wise, and venerable, and famous men have married their cook-maids, or worse-in their dotage. You are too young, rosy, and full of hope, as yet, for me to countenance by approbation these alliances between May and December.

When a young woman is in her fourth or fifth season, and has sung and played her musical répertoire over about five hundred times; when she has run the gauntlet of all the flower-shows, water-colour exhibitions, and fêtes champêtres that succeed each other with such punctilious regularity year after year; when she has so lost the pleasure of composing a letter to a person of the other sex as to wish for the aid of a Petit Secrétaire des Dames in writing it; when Number One has gone off to India and married Bessie, and Number Two has gone into the Church and taken to asceticism and celibacy, and Number Three has had his letters back, and has returned those he has not lit his cigars with, and Number Four has turned out a deceiver; Number Five, a pauper; Number Six, a rascal; and Number Seven, a fool-theu, when all these foxes have been started, and the scent has been lost again, it will be time for me to tell that young woman-I am sure she will never be daughter of mine what is to be said in favour and disfavour of young girls marrying old gentlemen.

But it is very foolish, and very wicked, to dogmatise on the subject. Some girls seem cut out for old men's wives. Look at

terrier; also that the nearest window-blind was half-down, and that you think some one else—a lady-was in the vehicle. My darling, a British Nobleman is a personage whom we ought all to be proud and delighted to know; and, had my afflictions permitted me to have been with you, I should, probably-from the society in which I mixed during the lifetime of your dear papa-have recognised his lordship immediately. He might have been a baby in arms when I first saw him; but I should have detected the family likeness in a moment. To know an individual of such elevated station would, indeed, be an honour and inestimable pleasure; but a railway carriage was not the place for such an introduction. You may meet his lordship hereafter. You did quite right in lowering your veil when he turned round-his foot on the carriage step-to have a last look at you. The young nobility of England, my dear, are very wild; and there is no knowing whom else might have been in that brougham.

I most earnestly hope that the wretch of a cabman who abused you so shamefully, and flung your luggage on the pavement when you refused to pay him more than half-acrown fare from Babylon Bridge to Pagoda Square, will be prosecuted and punished as he deserves. There used to be stocks and pillories for these disgraceful people; but such wholesome punishments seem to have been abolished since that Reform Act from which we were all to reap so much benefit. There was a hackney coachman who was rude to poor dear Sir Charles one night, when he brought him home from a loyal dinner at the British Coffee Hotel, Cockspur Street, and who was transported. I believe that it was some months afterwards that he was punished, and for horsestealing that time; but Sir Charles threatened that he would speak to Government about him, and I am sure he

kept his word. I remember that your dear papa could scarcely stand or speak plain on the night he came home, doubtlessin consequence of the man's rudeness; and the wretch had also, it appears, robbed him of eight corkscrews and two volumes of Acts of Parliament, which—I don't exactly know why he had brought home from the British Hotel. I wonder Pincott did not tear the cabman's eyes out. Of course, the servants in the Square took his number, and he will be had up and tried.

Shanko Fanko, my little page, tells me that it is nearly post time. He has to call at the library and the doctor's, and I must close this letter. Heaven bless you, my

dear!

CONSTANCE CHESTERFIELD.

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