of
London seasons, there is yet much to learn in the way of cool and
self-possessed effrontery, from the habits of Baden and its brethren.

I was dreadfully shocked last night by meeting one I had not seen
for many years before. How changed from what I knew her once!--what a
terrible change! When first I saw her, it was during a visit I made
to her mother's house in Wales; her brother was an Oxford friend, and
brought me down with him for the shooting season to Merionethshire.
Poor fellow! he died of consumption at two-and-twenty, and left all he
possessed--a handsome estate--to his only sister. Hence all her misery!
Had she remained comparatively portionless, rich only in her beauty and
the graces of a manner that was fascination itself, she might now have
been the happy wife of some worthy Englishman--one whose station is a
trust held on the tenure of his rectitude and honour; for such is public
feeling in our country, and such is it never elsewhere.

She was then about eighteen or nineteen, and the very ideal of what an
English girl at that age should be. On a mind highly stored and amply
cultivated, no unworthy or depreciating influence had yet descended;
freedom of thought, freshness almost childish, had given her an
animation and buoyancy only subdued by the chastening modesty of coming
womanhood. Enthusiastic in all her pursuits, for they were graceful
and elevating, her mind had all the simplicity of the child with the
refinement of the highest culture; and, like those who are brought up
in narrow circles, her affections for a few spread themselves out in
the varied forms that are often scattered and diffused over the wider
surface of the world. Thus her brother was not merely the great object
of her affection and pride, but he was the companion of her rides and
walks, the confidant of all her secret feelings, the store in which she
laid up her newly acquired knowledge, or drew, at will, for more. With
him she read and studied; delighted by the same pursuits, their natures
blended into one harmonious _corde_, which no variance or dissonance
ever troubled.

His death, although long and gradually anticipated, nearly brought her
to the grave. The terrible nature of the malady, so often inherent in
the same family, gave cause for the most anxious fears on her account,
and her mother, herself almost brokenhearted, took her abroad, hoping
by the mildness of a southern climate and change of scene to arrest the
prog