favorite authors appropriate to the occasion." _The Novice of St. Dominick_ was Miss Owenson's second novel, and she went alone to London to make arrangements for its publication. In those days a journey from Ireland to that great city was no small undertaking, and when the coach drove into the yard of the Swan with Two Necks the enterprising young lady was utterly exhausted, and, seating herself on her little trunk in the inn-yard, fell fast asleep. But, as usual, she found friends, and good luck was on her side. The novel was cut down from six volumes to four, and with her first literary earnings, after assisting her father, she bought an Irish harp and a black mode cloak, being always devoted to music and dress. At this time her strongest ambition was to be every inch a woman. She gave up serious studies, to which she had applied herself, and cultivated even music as a mere accomplishment, fearful lest she should be considered a pedant or an artiste. Next came _The Wild Irish Girl_, her first national story, which gave her more than a national fame, and three hundred pounds from her fascinated publisher. It contains much curious information about the antiquities and social condition of Ireland, and a passionate pleading against the wrongs of its people. It made the piquant little governess all the rage in fashionable society, and until her marriage she was known by the name of her heroine, Glorvina. As a story the book is not worth reading at the present day. In _The Book of the Boudoir_, a sort of literary ragbag, she gives, under the heading "My First Rout in London," a graphic picture of an evening at Lady Cork's: "A few days after my arrival in London, and while my little book, _The Wild Irish Girl_, was running rapidly through successive editions, I was presented to the countess-dowager of Cork, and invited to a rout at her fantastic and pretty mansion in New Burlington street. Oh, how her Irish historical name tingled in my ears and seized on my imagination, reminding me of her great ancestor, 'the father of chemistry and uncle to the earl of Cork'! I stepped into my job carriage at the hour of ten, and, all alone by myself, as the song says, 'to Eden took my solitary way.' What added to my fears and doubts and hopes and embarrassments was a note from my noble hostess received at the moment of departure: 'Everybody has been invited expressly to meet the Wild Irish Girl; so she must bring her Irish harp. M.C.O.' I arrived at New Burlington street without my harp and with a beating heart, and I heard the high-sounding titles of princes and ambassadors and dukes and duchesses announced long before my poor plebeian name puzzled the porter and was bandied from footman to footman. As I ascended the marble stairs with their gilt balustrade, I was agitated by emotions similar to those which drew from a frightened countryman his frank exclamation in the heat of the battle of Vittoria: 'Oh, jabbers! I wish some of my greatest