er, for any one more
reasonable, amiable, and kind, in this as in most respects, can not
exist than herself; but nevertheless, when I went to bed last night
I sat by my open window, looking at the moon and thinking of my
social duties, and then scribbled endless doggerel in a highly
Byronic mood to deliver my mind upon the subject, after which,
feeling amazingly better, I went to bed and slept profoundly,
satisfied that I had given "society" a death-blow. But really,
jesting apart, the companionship of my own family--those I live
with, I mean--satisfies me entirely, and I have not the least
desire for any other.

Good-by, my dearest H----; do not punish me for not writing sooner
by not answering this for two months; but be a nice woman and write
very soon to yours ever,

FANNY.

P.S.--I am reading the memoirs of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, la
Grande Mademoiselle, written by herself: if you never read them,
do; they are very interesting and amusing.

The "Dick" mentioned in this letter was the nephew of my godmother, Miss
A---- W----, of Stafford, and son of Colonel ----, a Staffordshire
gentleman of moderate means, who went to Germany and settled at
Darmstadt, for the sake of giving a complete education in foreign
languages and accomplishments to his daughters. His eldest son was in
the Church. They resided at the little German court till the young girls
became young women, remarkable for their talents and accomplishments. In
the course of their long residence at Darmstadt they had become intimate
with the reigning duke and his family, whose small royalty admitted of
such friendly familiarity with well-born and well-bred foreigners. But
when Colonel ---- brought his wife and daughters back to England, like
most other English people who try a similar experiment, the change from
being decided _somebodies_ in the court circle of a German principality
(whose sovereign was chiefly occupied, it is true, with the government
of his opera-house) to being decided _nobodies_ in the huge mass of
obscure, middle-class English gentility, was all but intolerable to
them.

The peculiar gift of their second son, my eccentric friend Richard, was
a genius for painting, which might have won him an honored place among
English artists, had he ever chosen to join their ranks as a competitor
for