Through what was audacious in the commendation of so young a lady, there vibrated an exquisite under-tone of simplicity and nobleness. It contributed to soften still further the crude stiffness, essential to the naval moralist, not yet thirty, in his bearing towards Lady Bell, against whose heartlessness and artfulness he had forearmed himself, when he first contemplated with unequivocal condemnation the inconsistency of her position as the youngest and loveliest of dowagers. When Captain Fane proceeded to escort his ladies to the exhibition of Wedgwood ware, he found that there was no further call for him to point out excellencies, extol achievements, and elicit the faint echo of his own enthusiasm. Lady Bell especially was in unaffected delight. Her whole artistic nature was stirred; she was excited to the highest enjoyment. Lady Bell flew from fountain to statue, from plateau to vase. She hung over the nymphs, with their garlands, over the groups of flowers—herself the most graceful nymph and blooming flower that met the spectator’s eye. She was on her own ground. The ware of Wedgwood and the designs of Flaxman were, indeed, infinitely beyond her poor little performances in “composition” for seals and patterns for ruffles; but the spirit of the two was not so wide apart as to prevent Lady Bell’s entering heart and soul into the finished work before her, and rejoicing in its culmination. “If Mr. Watt is a stooping, spectacled man, whose grey hair needs no powder, as powder will not conceal its weather-worn whiteness, what do you say to all these elegant forms and materials owing their origin to a small-pox-seamed working man, wanting a leg?” Captain Fane tried her. She only laughed. “I should say he was Vulcan himself, only Vulcan was a smith, not a potter. But I was thinking of the shield of Achilles, of which I have read in Mr. Pope’s ‘Homer.’ I should not mind what he was who could shed beauty around him. Look at these sky-blues, sea-greens, shell lilacs, and pearl-whites. Notice that cup on the stalk, Captain Fane; what a globe, what delicately-raised birds! I vow I can count their feathers in flight along the rim. But I am forgetting to thank you, sir,” exclaimed Lady Bell, stopping on a sudden thought, and turning to her conductor with frank gratitude. “You have given me a very happy morning. And not only that, but on many another morning when I am dabbling feebly enough with my box of colours and my embroidery chenilles, I shall think of this morning, and recall to my profit, sure, as well as to my pleasure, Mr. Boulton’s coins and medals, and Mr. Wedgwood and Mr. Bentley’s least dish.”