SUPPOSED, SHE WOULD SCARCELY HAVE ACCEPTED IN HER YOUTH.

Maria, good-humoured, and handsome, and tall,
For a husband was at her last stake;
And having in vain danced at many a ball,
Is now happy to _jump at a Wake_.

'We were all at the play last night to see Miss O'Neil in Isabella. I
do not think she was quite equal to my expectation. I fancy I want
something more than can be. Acting seldom satisfies me. I took two
pockethandkerchiefs, but had very little occasion for either. She is
an elegant creature, however, and hugs Mr. Young delightfully.'

'So, Miss B. is actually married, but I have never seen it in the
papers; and one may as well be single if the wedding is not to be in
print.'

Once, too, she took it into her head to write the following mock
panegyric on a young friend, who really was clever and handsome:--

1.

In measured verse I'll now rehearse
The charms of lovely Anna:
And, first, her mind is unconfined
Like any vast savannah.

2.

Ontario's lake may fitly speak
Her fancy's ample bound:
Its circuit may, on strict survey
Five hundred miles be found.

3.

Her wit descends on foes and friends
Like famed Niagara's Fall;
And travellers gaze in wild amaze,
And listen, one and all.

4.

Her judgment sound, thick, black, profound,
Like transatlantic groves,
Dispenses aid, and friendly shade
To all that in it roves.

5.

If thus her mind to be defined
America exhausts,
And all that's grand in that great land
In similes it costs--

6.

Oh how can I her person try
To image and portray?
How paint the face, the form how trace
In which those virtues lay?

7.

Another world must be unfurled,
Another language known,
Ere tongue or sound can publish round
Her charms of flesh and bone.

I believe that all this nonsense was nearly extempore, and that the fancy
of drawing the images from America arose at the moment from the obvious
rhyme which presented itself in the first stanza.

The following extracts are from letters addressed to a niece who was at
that time amusing herself by attempting a novel, probably never finished,
certainly never published, and of which I know nothing but what these
extracts tell. They show the good-natured sympathy and encouragement
which the aunt, then herself