raised so as to cut off the Duchess's view into them.

Upon my venturing to express my surprise that anybody should go to
the house of a person of whom they told such anecdotes, Lady Morley
replied, "She is the only woman in the world of whom one does tell
such things and yet goes to see her. She is the most miserable woman
in England; she is entirely alone now, and she cannot bear to be
alone, and, for his sake who was the dearest and most excellent and
amiable creature that ever breathed, one goes on going to her, as I
shall till she or I die." But what a description of the last days of
the mistress of Holland House!

Sidney Smith, with whom I had become well acquainted when I wrote
the letter to Lady Dacre in which I mention him, used to amuse
himself, and occasionally some of my other friends, by teasing me on
the subject of what he called my hallucination with regard to my
having married in America. He never allowed any allusion to the
circumstance without the most comical expressions of regret for
this, as he called it, curious form of monomania. On the occasion to
which I refer in this letter, he and Mrs. Smith had met some friends
at dinner at our house, and I was taking leave of them, previous to
my departure for Liverpool, when he exclaimed, "Now do, my dear
child, be persuaded to give up this extraordinary delusion; let it,
I beg, be recorded of us both, that this pleasing and intelligent
young lady labored under the singular and distressingly insane idea
that she had contracted a marriage with an American; from which
painful hallucination she was eventually delivered by the friendly
exhortations of a learned and pious divine, the Rev. Sydney Smith."
Everybody round us was in fits of laughter, as he affectionately
held my hand, and thus paternally admonished me. I held up my left
hand with its wedding-ring, and began, "Oh, but the baby!" when the
ludicrous look with which my reverend tormentor received this
overwhelming testimony of mine, threw the whole company into
convulsions, and nothing was heard throughout the room but sighs and
sobs of exhaustion, and faint ejaculations and cries for mercy,
while everybody was wiping tears of laughter from their eyes. As for
me, I covered up my face, and very nearly went into hysterics.

The special and reportable sallies of Sydne