“Molly was a very dragon of discretion, and the two girls might have had a worse guardian. Lady Clark often told of the Kilkenny days, when she, an unformed lump of a girl, whose greatest delight was to go rambling about the fields, armed with a big stick and followed by a dog, once returned from her rambles covered with mud, and her frock torn from scrambling over hedges and ditches, her hair all blown over her face (she had the loveliest long golden hair that ever was seen), and found her sister Sydney and these two young officers sitting in the parlour, talking high sentiment, and all three shedding tears. Molly came in at the same moment to lay the cloth for dinner, and thinking they had stayed quite long enough, said, in her most unceremonious manner, ‘Come, be off wid yez! an’ the master will be coming in to his dinner, and what will he say to find you here fandangoing with Miss Sydney?’ Sydney, who the moment before had been enjoying her sorrows, burst out laughing at this sally, and, shaking her black curly head, danced away like a fairy.” What an exquisite piece of word-painting! What a charming scene! Who can wonder that the results should have been so serious? Of Captain Earl, to be sure, we hear nothing more, but Captain Benson wrote two letters at least to his lady-love, both of which, dated in 1798, are given _in extenso_. Miss Jewsbury’s remarks concerning them are edifying:— “These two letters,” she says, “are much worn and torn, as though from frequent reading and handling. On the back of the latest of them is written, ‘This elegant-minded and highly-gifted young man drowned himself near York a few months after I received this letter.’”