s. Charles
Matthews at the end of the summer.

We travelled in the _malle poste_, and I remember but one incident
connected with our journey. Some great nobleman in Paris was about to
give a grand banquet, and the _conducteur_ of our vehicle had been
prevailed upon to bring up the fish for the occasion in large hampers on
our carriage, which was then the most rapid public conveyance on the
road between the coast and the capital. The heat was intense, and the
smell of our "luggage" intolerable. My mother complained and
remonstrated in vain; the name of the important personage who was to
entertain his guests with this delectable fish was considered an
all-sufficient reply. At length the contents of the baskets began
literally to ooze out of them and stream down the sides of the carriage;
my mother threatening an appeal to the authorities at the _bureau de
poste_, and finally we got rid of our pestiferous load.

I was now placed in a school in the Rue d'Angouleme, Champs Elysees; a
handsome house, formerly somebody's private hotel, with _porte cochere_,
_cour d'honneur_, a small garden beyond, and large, lofty ground-floor
apartments opening with glass doors upon them. The name of the lady at
the head of this establishment was Rowden; she had kept a school for
several years in Hans Place, London, and among her former pupils had had
the charge of Miss Mary Russell Mitford, and that clever but most
eccentric personage, Lady Caroline Lamb. The former I knew slightly,
years after, when she came to London and was often in friendly
communication with my father, then manager of Covent Garden, upon the
subject of the introduction on the stage of her tragedy of the
"Foscari."

The play of "Rienzi," in which Miss Mitford achieved the manly triumph
of a really successful historical tragedy, is, of course, her principal
and most important claim to fame, though the pretty collection of rural
sketches, redolent of country freshness and fragrance, called "Our
Village," precursor, in some sort, of Mrs. Gaskell's incomparable
"Cranford," is, I think, the most popular of Miss Mitford's works.

She herself has always a peculiar honor in my mind, from the exemplary
devotion of her whole life to her father, for whom her dutiful and
tender affection always seemed to me to fulfil the almost religious idea
conveyed by the old-fashioned, half-heathen phrase of "filial piety."

Lady Caroline Lamb I never saw, but from friends of mine who were