took in the situation with a glance:—"My dear Mr. So and So," she exclaimed, with one of her most captivating smiles, "excuse me for interrupting you, Miss X is going to give us a recitation—The Bishop and the Caterpillar." The Bishop and the Caterpillar proved so amusing that everything else was forgotten, and all went smoothly. No more successful hostess than Lady Wilde could be found, she managed to put people at their ease, and without talking too much herself, she drew out the best in others. What matter that the rooms were small, that the tea was overdrawn, or that there was a large hole in the red curtain that kept out the vulgar light of the day? Here was a woman who understood the lost art of entertaining, and made her house a centre of light and leading. Thoroughly sympathetic, she entered into the aspirations of everyone who ever held a pen, or touched a paint brush, and those who hailed from the Green Isle of her birth were specially welcome to her.
The last years of her life were clouded by family troubles, into which there is no need to enter here. She died February 3rd, 1896, in the seventieth year of her age.
She was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery. It would have seemed more appropriate to have laid her to rest among the glens and hills of her native country that she loved so well. That love
