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table, whereon she worked, they would have arrived at a directly opposite and a too true conclusion, that the melancholy was real, the mirth assumed.

"My next visit to her was after she left her grandmamma's, and went to reside at 22, Hans Place. Miss Emma Roberts and her sister at that time boarded in Miss Lance's school, and Miss Landon found there a room at the top of the house, where she could have the quiet and seclusion her labor required, and which her kind-natured, but restless grandmother prevented. She never could understand how 'speaking one word to Letty, just one word, and not keeping her five minutes away from that desk, where she would certainly grow humped or crooked,' could interfere with her work! She was one of those stolid persons who are the bane of authors, who think nothing of the lost idea, and the unravelling of the web, when a train of thought is broken by the 'only one word,' 'only a moment,' which scatters thoughts to the wind,—thoughts that can no more be gathered home than the thistle-down that is scattered by a passing breeze.

"She continued to reside in that unostentatious home, obedient to the rules of the school as the youngest pupil, dining with the children at their early hour, and returning to her sanctuary, whence she sent forth rapidly and continuously what won for her the adoration of the young and the admiration of the old. But though she ceased to reside with her grandmother, she was most devoted in her attentions to her aged relative, and trimmed her caps and bonnets and quilled her frills as usual. I have seen the old lady's borders and ribbons mingled with pages of manuscript, and known her to put aside a poem to 'settle up' grandmamma's cap for Sunday. These were the minor duties in which she indulged; but her grandmother owed the greater part, if not the entire, of her comfort to the generous and unselfish nature of that gifted girl. Her mother I never saw: morally right in all her arrange-

ments, she was mentally wrong, and the darling poet of the public had no loving sympathy, no tender care from her. L. E. L. had passed through the sufferings of a neglected childhood, and but for the love of her grandmother she would have known next to nothing of the love of motherhood. Thus she was left alone with her genius: for admiration, however grateful to a woman's senses, never yet filled a woman's heart.

"When I first knew her, and for some time after, she was childishly untidy and negligent in her dress: her frocks were tossed on, as if buttons and strings were unnecessary incumbrances,—one sleeve off the shoulder, the other on,—and her soft, silky hair brushed 'any how': but Miss Emma Roberts, whose dress was always in good taste, determined on her reformation, and gradually the young poet, as she expressed it, 'did not know herself.' I use the epithet 'young,' because she was wonderfully youthful in appearance, and positively as she grew older looked younger,—her delicate complexion, the transparent tenderness of her skin, and the playful expression of her child-like features adding to the deception.

"I was one day suddenly summoned to Hans Place, and drawn into a consultation on the important subject of a fancy-ball, which Miss Landon and Miss Emma Roberts had 'talked over' Miss Lance to let them give to their friends. They wished me to appear as the 'wild Irish girl,' or the genius of Erin, with an Irish harp, to which I was to sing snatches of the melodies. Miss Spence was there in consultation, as she 'knew everybody.' She congratulated me on my début as an authoress, (I had recently published my first book, 'Sketches of Irish Character,') and politely added, 'Now you are one of us, I shall be happy to receive you at my humble abode.'

"I begged to decline the proposal concerning the wild Irish girl and the Irish harp, but agreed to carry a basket of flowers. Certainly the fête-givers worked 'with a will,' turned the great house 'out of windows,' convert-