ment of society. We are a transition people, and I hope we shall not lag far behind them.
I have met many persons here whom to meet was like seeing the originals of familiar pictures. Jane Porter, Mrs. Opie, Mrs. Austen, Lockhart, Milman, Sir Francis Chantry, &c.[1] I owed Mrs. Opie a grudge for having made me, in my youth, cry my eyes out over her stories; but her fair, cheerful face forced me to forget it. She long ago forswore the world and its vanities, and adopted the Quaker foith and costume; but I fancied that her elaborate simplicity, and the fashionable little train to her pretty satin gown, indicated how much easier it is to adopt a theory than to change one's habits. Mrs. Austen stands high here for personal character, as well as for the very inferior but undisputed property of literary accomplishments. Her translations are so excellent that they class her with good original writers. If her manners were not strikingly conventional, she would constantly remind me of ——; she has the same Madame Roland order of architecture
- ↑ Some of my readers may be surprised to miss from the list ofthese eminent persons the names of the two female writers mostread in the United States, Miss Martineau and Mrs. Jameson. MissMartineau was on the Continent when I was in London, and in speaking of Mrs. Jameson in this public way would seem to me much like putting the picture of an intimate and dear friend into an exhibition-room. Besides, her rare gifts, attainments, and the almost unequalled richness and charm of her conversation are well known in this country. But with all these a woman may be, after all, but a kind of monster; how far they are transcended by the virtues and attractions of her domestic life, it was our happiness to know from seeing her daily in her English home.
