and how sensibly he can talk. "What a fine figure
he has for his age!" said I to Mr. Mandeville the other day. "Figure!
age!" said his father; "in the House of Commons he shall make a figure
to every age." I know that in writing to you, you will not be contented
if I do not say a great deal about myself. I shall therefore proceed to
tell you, that I feel already much better from the air and exercise! the
journey, from the conversation of my two guests, and, above all, from
the constant society of my dear boy. He was three last birthday. I think
that at the age of twenty-one, I am the least childish of the two.
Pray remember me to all in town who have not quite forgotten me. Beg
Lady------ to send Elizabeth a subscription ticket for Almack's, an
talking of Almack's, I think my boy's eyes are even more blue and
beautiful than Lady C-----'s.

Adieu, my dear Julia, Ever, &c. E. M.

Lady Emily Mandeville was the daughter of the Duke of Lindvale. She
married, at the age of sixteen, a man of large fortune, and some
parliamentary reputation. Neither in person nor in character was he much
beneath or above the ordinary standard of men. He was one of Nature's
Macadamised achievements. His great fault was his equality; and you
longed for a hill though it were to climb, or a stone though it were
in your way. Love attaches itself to something prominent, even if that
something be what others would hate. One can scarce feel extremes for
mediocrity. The few years Lady Emily had been married had but little
altered her character. Quick in feeling, though regulated in temper; gay
less from levity, than from that first _spring-tide_ of a heart which
has never yet known occasion to be sad; beautiful and pure, as an
enthusiast's dream of heaven, yet bearing within the latent and powerful
passion and tenderness of earth: she mixed with all a simplicity and
innocence which the extreme earliness of her marriage, and the ascetic
temper of her husband, had tendered less to diminish than increase. She
had much of what is termed genius--its warmth of emotion--its vividness
of conception--its admiration for the grand--its affection for the good,
and that dangerous contempt for whatever is mean and worthless, the very
indulgence of which is an offence against the habits of the world.
Her tastes were, however, too feminine and chaste ever to render her
eccentric: they were rather calculated to conceal than to publish the
deeper recesses of her na