The young writer of the above was not only remarkably observant of all that passed around her, but generally showed her reading by a quotation that should give force to the description of what she observed. Thus, in writing to her dear duchess, who had been suffering from fever (A. D. 1734), Miss Robinson remarks: “I shall put on as musty a face at your Grace’s fever as Miss W—— could make at the face of Doctor Sandys, to describe the horror of which would require at least as tragic a bard as Lee; for then she would look, good gods! how she would look!” This may smack of priggishness; but there was nothing of that, nor of false prudery, in Elizabeth Robinson’s character. Before she was fifteen, she had some experiences not likely to fall to the lot of young ladies of the present day. “I have in winter,” she writes to Mrs. Anstey, “gone eight miles to dance to the music of a blind fiddler, and returned at two o’clock in the morning, mightily pleased that I had been so well entertained.” Indeed, young ladies seem to have been thoroughly emancipated, and to have been abroad in the “wee sma’ hours ’ayont the twal,” enjoying all the perils consequent on such rather wild doings. In 1738, when our young lady was not quite eighteen, she went, with two of her brothers and her sister, eight miles to the play, from her Kentish home; and she tells the Duchess of Portland, “After the play, the gentlemen invited all the women to a supper at the inn, where we stayed till two o’clock in the morning, and then all set out for our respective homes.” The frolicsome damsel adds, “Before I had gone two miles, I had the pleasure of being overturned, at which I squalled for joy.” It was, perhaps, this indulgence in fun and late hours, joined to much solid reading, that made this youthful reveller and student hate early morning hours as she hated cards. But her “quality” was favourably shown in her ready observance of the law and custom of the house in which she happened to be a sojourner. There is no better proof than this of what is understood by “good breeding.” She would rather have gone down to breakfast at noon than at nine; but if the breakfast-hour of her entertainers was at eight, there was the young guest at table, fresh as the rose and brighter than the dawn. She amusingly illustrated this matter once, by writing from a house where she was tarrying, “Six o’clock in the morning; New Style.”