roses contended for the mastery. As for her eyes, Dr. Delany could never tell the colour of them, but thought they were best described in the language of the wisest of men as dove's eyes." Her lips were the only lips of woman he ever saw that were scarlet; her bloom was beyond expression; and he winds up with an extraordinary passage, in which he applies to her united graces a description again borrowed from the language of King Solomon-"Fair as the moon, clear as the sun, but terrible as an army with banners!" Only she was not so terrible as to scare him from proposing to her.

Her letters to her only sister, Mrs. Dewes, are the best things in these volumes, and show all the affection of her nature, the range of her accomplishments, the activity of her mind, and the extent of her acquaintance. We find her in one page dealing out ipecacuanha and rhubarb to the poor people of her neighbourhood; in the next, criticising Sterne, or corresponding with the poet Young; again, deeply absorbed in the patterns of her shell-work, and the colours of her worsted; then arranging a breakfast party for her godson, Lord Mornington (the Duke of Wellington's father); further on, excited about Richardson's last novel, or transported with the new oratorio of Handel; here describing a dinner, and there prescribing a castigation for her sister's children. Her medical prescriptions are sometimes very curious. For her nephew, ill of an ague, she prescribes "a spider put into a goosequill, well sealed and secured, and hung about the child's neck as low as the pit of his stomach." To restore a complexion, which had suffered in an illness which seems to have been either cow-pox or the measles, she orders a wash distilled from the rottenest apples that can be found. For a child afflicted with worms, she ordered an elixir of quicksilver-water; that is to say, a pound of quicksilver was to be boiled in a gallon of water till half the water was consumed away, and then to be constantly drunk at meals or whenever thirst was felt. Mrs. Delany does not say whether the water alone was to be drunk or the whole composition, quicksilver and all. I suppose the latter, as in those days quicksilver was deemed a very harmless useful drug, so that ladies going to a ball would swallow some of it, under the idea that it would make them light of toe, and give them a grace beyond the reach of art.

Before leaving the subject of dancing, however, I must linger for a moment in the ball-room to note one rather inconvenient arrangement of those days-that partners were not permitted to rove in their affections. A partner was selected in the beginning of the evening, and it was not allowable to have another for the rest of the night. The bond while the ball lasted was indissoluble as marriage. In the country they began to dance about six, and kept it up till about ten. Then there was a supper; and it appears that both at supper and at dinner the sacred number of dishes for the table was seven, or a multiple of seven. Here, for example, would be a good dinner of seven dishes, all set on the table at once-a boiled

leg of mutton, a sirloin of roast beef, six boiled chickens, bacon and greens, a couple of apple pies, and a dish of potatoes. It is awful to contemplate the combination of heavy dishes deemed proper in those days. No variety; boiled and roast, roast and boiled, in endless succession-boiled beef, roast beef, and beefsteaks, one after the other. How they would despise our modern kickshaws!

One of the most curious stories told in this correspondence relates to an Irish heiress, Miss Macdermott, who came to Dr. Delany and expressed a desire to recant her religion, which was Roman Catholic. On one occasion she and her sister happened to visit an uncle-named Flinn. Uncle Flinn had a son who had set his heart on his cousin, Miss Macdermott's, wealth, had offered to marry her, and was bitterly disappointed that she refused him. On the occasion of this visit to his father, her uncle Flinn, a plot was laid to catch her. Her carriage was sent away privately, and the two sisters were told they must stay the night under their uncle's roof. They submitted very unwillingly, and the object of the hospitality thus forced upon them soon became evident. As they were seated at cards, four men in masks rushed into the room. The sisters ran into the next apartment, one hiding under the bed and the other behind it. The younger sister was first seized, and then let go, as she was the wrong one. It was Flinn's son, who had come for his bride, and he wanted only the elder sister, with her money. Violent hands were laid upon her, and she was dragged from under the bed. She fought hard to avoid her persesecutor, "and," says Mrs. Delany, "he could not take hold of her to take her away till all her clothes were torn off except her stays, her pockets, and her under-petticoat." She implored for mercy, but they would hear of none. In the rather pitiable condition of dress to which she was reduced, they dragged her into the hall, where a crowd of some two hundred desperate-looking men were assembled to receive her. gag her, but succeeded only in tying her hand and foot. horse and pillion ready at the door, and she was tied on behind her lover, and in hot haste carried off into the dark night. Before she had got a mile from the house she struggled so hard as to get her hands free, and to succeed in throwing herself from the horse. She was soon surrounded, but contrived to get possession of a sword, and with her back against a tree, defended herself as she could-nor was she finally conquered till one of the gang ran a sword up her arm and disabled her. They then pursued their journey a few miles further, until they reached a cabin, where a priest was brought upon the scene, who attempted to marry her by force. She resisted with all her might, dashed the ring away, and, seizing a mug of milk, threw it in the priest's face. In the mean time the country around had been raised by Miss Macdermott's sister, whom they had allowed to escape from Uncle Flinn's house. They were on the track of the marauder, and while the wedding ceremony was being forced upon the unlucky lady, in came a man to

They tried to

There was a

They set off at bled profusely.

whisper in Flinn's ear that the enemy were at hand. once, carrying away the lady, whose wound in the arm They carried her to a bog where they meant to hide her. They plunged her up to her shoulders in mud, placing a man on each side with pistols to prevent her escape. It was all of no avail, for her friends came up and saved her. The amusing part of the story is the dipping her into the bog; for, barbarous as it may appear, she and her friends attributed the preservation of her life to that little operation, which was supposed to have stopped the bleeding of her arm.

It is a sad picture of the wild Irish life of the last century, but it is not much worse than a similar story which we find in the pages of Alexander Carlyle. It was another case of abduction, with this difference, however, that the culprit, Lord Grange, acted on considerable provocation. He was not very happy with his wife, who slept with razors under her pillow, and in her fits of jealousy threatened to kill him. He seized her, dragged her into his coach, carried her off to the Highlands, and shipped her to the island of St. Kilda, far out in the Atlantic, where she had to waste the remainder of her existence among squalid savages, who could not speak a word of English, who scraped with difficulty from their rock a scanty subsistence, and who to this day are sunk in a poverty and ignorance which strangely contrasts with the intelligence and prosperity of their Gaelic kinsmen on the mainland. What seems to aggravate the offence of the outrage is, the fact that Lord Grange was one of the judges of the Court of Session, though, on the other hand, there is this to be said in his favour, that the lady's friends did not choose to stir in her behalf; and, therefore, practically admitted the justice of the banishment to which he had consigned her. These were times when law had not established a universal authority in any country, and when the wild justice of revenge and the arbitrary code of honour were permitted to reign side by side with it, and to supply its deficiencies. So long as the duel was a recognized institution, the authority of the law was of necessity divided, and we need scarcely wonder that in unsettled districts might became right, and society flourished according to—

"The simple plan

That he may take who has the power,

And he may keep who can."

The Alexander Carlyle from whose autobiography I have borrowed this little incident, was, in his way, as remarkable a character as Mrs. Delany. He was known by the name of Jupiter Carlyle, because it was said that he had often sat to one of the Scottish painters for the king of gods and men. As the editor of his autobiography throws a doubt upon this reason for the nickname, it is very easy to suggest another, namely, that he was so called on account of the joviality of his character. He was two-and-twenty years younger than Mrs. Delany, but his life, like hers, stretched over more than four-score winters-like her he delighted in society, and like her he

preserved his gaiety of spirit and love of talk to the last. Born in 1722 and dying in 1805, he knew all the principal men and women of his time; and though he was but the pastor of a small country congregation in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, he mixed with all sorts of people, and engaged in all sorts of pursuits. He figured in the theatre as well as in the church. He wrote squibs as well as sermons. He preached the Gospel and drained the bottle. He drilled as a soldier; he eat jolly suppers without end; he thundered in the ecclesiastical Parliament of Scotland; he had all the women making love to him—and he liked nothing better.

His description of Edinburgh, and the country around it, during the rebellion of 1745, brings the whole scene more vividly before us than any other account of it which has been published. He was present at the battle of Prestonpans, and was intimately acquainted with all the incidents of that inglorious campaign. Colonel Gardiner, who fell in the battle of Prestonpans, he knew well; Robertson, the historian, Hume, Adam Smith, Smollett, and John Home, were his intimates; and were I to name all the people with whom he came into contact, and of whom he gives us anecdotes, I should have to make a catalogue of nearly every celebrated person of the last century. His best stories are, of course, about the people whom he knew most intimately. One of the most interesting of these is an anecdote of Hume, who, on his mother's death, was plunged in the deepest affliction. His friend Mr. Boyle failed to comfort him. Hume was inconsolable, and drowned in tears. At last, said Boyle to him, "My friend, you owe this uncommon grief to your having thrown off the principles of religion; for if you had not, you would have been consoled by the firm belief that the good lady, who was not only the best of mothers, but the most pious of Christians, is now completely happy in the realms of the just." Hume's answer was- "Though I threw out my speculations to entertain and employ the learned and metaphysical world, yet in other things I do not think so differently from the rest of mankind as you may imagine." It was a curious confession of the practical powerlessness of his unbelief, before a great calamity which rendered him subject to passion as others are. It is, in fact, only as intellectual sport that the desolating scepticism of such men as Hume can prevail. They overlook the emotions. -they ignore the necessities of the heart-they garble the facts of human life-and mutilate the faculties of the human mind. Mere intellect, which alone Hume brought to bear upon the question, can never decide it. At the same time it must be remembered, that if Hume neglected to give the feelings fair-play in the matter, it was not because he was destitute of feeling. The above anecdote indicates tenderness of heart; and Dr. Carlyle says of him that "he had the greatest simplicity of mind and manner, with the utmost facility and benevolence of temper, of any man I ever knew." It appears that Mrs. Adam, mother of the architects of that name, would never hear of his coming to her home, and said on one

occasion, to her son, "I shall be glad to see any of your companions to dinner, but I hope you will never bring the Atheist here to disturb my peace." Robert Adam, however, fell upon a stratagem to win over his mother. He introduced Hume to her under a feigned name, and on the breaking up of her company had the pleasure of hearing her say—“I must confess that you bring very agreeable companions about you; but the large jolly man who sat next me is the most agreeable of them all.” That was the very Atheist, mother," he said, "that you were so much afraid of." "Well then," was her reply, "you may bring him here as much as you please, for he's the most innocent man I ever met with."

A very striking thing about old Carlyle is this-that in his old age, he enjoyed not only the poetry of Scott and Southey, but was able to appreciate Wordsworth. We all know how difficult it is for one age to understand, much less to enjoy, the poetry of a succeeding age. How many of the old people whose taste had been formed in the school of Pope and Addison, were capable of comprehending Wordsworth? When his ballads made their first appearance, the critical world rose in arms against him; and it was only with the young, fresh minds that they made way. It is a remarkable proof of Carlyle's liveliness and vigour, that, trembling on the grave, he was able to relish the new order of poetry introduced by the Lake School. That is one more evidence of the truth which I insisted upon at the commencement of this paper, that excellence in gossip is only attainable by minds that have been highly cultivated, and are capable of enjoying something better than gossip. The sort of gossip we find in the papers of Mrs. Delany and Dr. Carlyle is a study of human life. Their sketches of character and of manners are studies for grand historical pictures which we all unconsciously compose for ourselves—and in which such trifles as the Spanish hat and feather, the doubloon and the dollar, the black-letter tome and the red-letter holiday, fitly typify the sixteenth century; while the Vandyke collar and the Dutch gardens, the coffee-house and the bagnio, the bibles and the ballads, the lovelocks of the Cavaliers and the cropped ears of the Roundheads, suggest a world of life in the seventeenth century; and this eighteenth century, which lives and moves upon the pages of Mrs. Delany and the Scottish Jupiter, leaves its form and pressure on our imaginations in hoops and periwigs, and beauty spots, in the music of Handel and in the motion of the minuet, in the rattle of the wits and in the letters of their dames, in suppers and dinners, in balls and assemblies of every description. The artist who would succeed in such gossip as this must crest the wave of society, and, while indulging in small-talk, soar above it in soul.