y declined the
offer, looking as like Audrey when she asks "What is poetical?" as I
could: to which Mrs. Grote, with an indescribable look, accent, and
gesture of good-humored contempt, replied, "Ah, well, it might not
interest you; I dare say it wouldn't. It _is_ political, to be sure;
it is political."

This is the second very clever woman, to whom I know my intelligence
had been vaunted, to whom I turned out completely "Paradise Lost,"
as my mother's comical old acquaintance, Lady Dashwood King, used to
say to Adelaide of me: "Ah, yes, I know your sister is vastly
clever, exceedingly intelligent, and all that kind of thing, but she
is 'Paradise Lost' to me, my dear." I sometimes regretted having
hidden my small light under a bushel as entirely as I did, in the
little intercourse I had with the first Lady Ashburton, Lady Harriet
Montague, with whom some of my friends desired that I should become
acquainted, and who asked me to her house in London, and to the
Grange, having been assured that there was something in me, and
trying to find it out, without ever succeeding.

Mrs. Grote had generally a very contemptuous regard for the capacity
of her female friends. She was extremely fond of my sister, but
certainly had not the remotest appreciation of her great cleverness;
and on one occasion betrayed the most whimsical surprise when
Adelaide mentioned having received a letter from the great German
scholar Waelcker. "Who? what? you? Waelcker, write to you!"
exclaimed Grota, in amazement more apparent than courteous, it
evidently being beyond the wildest stretch of her imagination that
one of the most learned men in Europe, and profoundest scholars of
Germany, could be a correspondent of my sister's, and a devoted
admirer of her brilliant intelligence.

Mrs. Grote's appearance was extremely singular; "striking" is, I
think, the most appropriate word for it. She was very tall,
square-built, and high-shouldered; her hands and arms, feet and legs
(the latter she was by no means averse to displaying) were
uncommonly handsome and well made. Her face was rather that of a
clever man than a woman, and I used to think there was some
resemblance between herself and our piratical friend Trelawney.

Her familiar style of language among her intimates was something
that could only be belie