to a married sister at Rome. It ran
thus:

Hanover Square, Nov. 10, 18--.

Dearest Dorothy,--

Here we are back in town, at a season, too, when we find ourselves
the only people left; and if I wanted to make a long story of how it
happens, there is the material; but it is precisely what I desire to
avoid, and at the risk of being barely intelligible, I will be brief. We
have left Earlshope, and, indeed, Herefordshire, for good. Our campaign
there was a social failure, but just such a failure as I predicted it
would and must be; and although, possibly, I might have liked to have
been spared some of the mortifications we met with, I am too much
pleased with the results to quarrel over the means.

You are already in possession of what we intended by the purchase of
Earlshope--how we meant to become county magnates, marry our sons and
daughters to neighboring magnates, and live as though we had been rooted
to the soil for centuries. I say "we," my dear, because I am too good
a wife to separate myself from Col. B. in all these projects; but I am
fain to own that as I only saw defeat in the plan, I opposed it from the
first. Here, in town, money will do anything; at least, anything that
one has any right to do. There may be a set or a clique to which it will
not give admission; but who wants them, who needs them?

There's always a wonderful Van Eyck or a Memling in a Dutch town, to
obtain the sight of which you have to petition the authorities, or
implore the Stadtholder; but I never knew any one admit that success
repaid the trouble; and the chances are that you come away from the
sight fully convinced that you have seen scores of old pictures exactly
like it, and that all that could be said was, it was as brown, and as
dusky, and as generally disappointing, as its fellows. So it is with
these small exclusive societies. It may be a great triumph of ingenuity
to pick the lock; but there 's nothing in the coffer to reward it. I
repeat, then, with money--and we had money--London was open to us. All
the more, too, that for some years back society has taken a speculative
turn; and it is nothing derogatory to find people "to go in," as it is
called, for a good thing, in "Turks" or "Brazilians," in patent fuel, or
a new loan to the children of Egypt. To these, and such like, your City
man and banker is esteemed a safe pilot; and you would be amused at the
amount of attention Col. B. was accustomed to meet with from men who
r