WIVES OF THE PRIME MINISTERS
written for the occasion, of which these lines will serve to show the quality:
"Ah! look not thus on me, so grave, so sad;
Shake not your heads, nor say the Lady's mad.
Judge not of others, for there is but one
To whom the heart and feelings can be known.
Upon my youthful faults few censures cast;
Look to the future—and forgive the past
London, farewell, vain world, vain life, adieu!
Take the last tears I e'er shall shed for you.
Young tho' I seem, I leave the world for ever,
Never to enter it again—no, never—never!"
She was in a terrible state of uncertainty as to what she should now do with her life, and in discussing the matter with Lady Morgan makes all sorts of wild suggestions. Should she live a good sort of a half kind of life in some cheap street, or above a shop, or give lectures to little children and keep a school and so earn her bread? Or should she write a sort of quiet everyday sort of novel, full of wholesome truths, or attempt to be poetical; or if she failed, beg her friends for a guinea apiece and their name to sell her work "on the best foolscap paper"; or should she fret and die?
But Lady Caroline, with all her cleverness, was no artist in life, and did not realise that true wisdom and happiness resided in making the most of what she possessed, and that the
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