itics, journalists,
connoisseurs, and amateurs, who flock there are not her admirers? Lady
Barbara Chesselton writes travels, novels, novellets, philosophical
reflections, poems, and almost every species of thing which ever has
been written--such is the universality of her knowledge, experience, and
genius: and who does not hasten to be the first to pour out in reviews,
magazines, daily and hebdomadal journals, the earliest and most fervid
words of homage and admiration? Lady Barbara edits an annual, and is a
contributor to the "Keepsake;" and in her kindness, she is sure to find
out all the nice young men about the press; to encourage them by her
smile, and to raise them, by her fascinating conversation and her
brilliant saloons, above those depressing influences of a too sensitive
modesty, which so weighs on the genius of the youth of this age; so that
she sends them away, all heart and soul, in the service of herself and
literature, which are the same thing; and away they go, extemporizing
praises on her ladyship, and spreading them through leaves of all sizes,
to the wondering eyes of readers all the world over. Publishers run with
their unsalable manuscripts, and beg Lady Barbara to have the goodness
to put her name on the title, knowing by golden experience that one
stroke of her pen, like the point of a galvanic wire, will turn all the
dullness of the dead mass into flame. Lady Barbara is not barbarous
enough to refuse so simple and complimentary a request; nay, her
benevolence extends on every hand. Distressed authors, male and female,
who have not her rank, and, therefore, most clearly not her genius, beg
her to take their literary bantlings under her wing; and with a heart,
as full of generous sympathies as her pen is of magic, she writes but
her name on the title as an "Open Sesame!" and lo! the dead become
alive; her genius permeates the whole volume, which that moment puts
forth wings of popularity, and flies into every bookseller's shop and
every circulating library in the kingdom.

Such is the life of glory and Christian benevolence which Lady Barbara
daily leads, making authors, critics, and publishers all happy together,
by the overflowing radiance of her indefatigable and inexhaustible
genius, though she sometimes slyly laughs to herself, and says, "What a
thing is a title! if it were not for that, would all these people come
to me?" While Tom, who is member of parliament for the little borough of
Dear