never again, throughout her whole future life, did she pass so happy a day. Nor, indeed, could she; for the love of admiration, which this scene was calculated to excite or increase, could never again be so fully gratified; there is always some alloying ingredient in the cup, some drawback upon the triumphs, of grown people. Her father carried on the frolic, and we may conclude, confirmed the taste, by having her picture painted for the club-room, that she might be enrolled a regular toast. Perhaps some young ladies of more than eight years old would not much object to have lived in those times. Fathers may be wiser now than they were then, but they rarely make themselves so thoroughly agreeable to their children. This stimulating education would leave a weak and vain girl still more vain and weak; but it had not that effect on Lady Mary. Vain she probably was, and her father’s boastfulness perhaps made her vainer; but her vanity took an intellectual turn. She read vaguely and widely; she managed to acquire some knowledge—how much is not clear—of Greek and Latin, and certainly learned with sufficient thoroughness French and Italian. She used to say that she had the worst education in the world, and that it was only by the ‘help of an uncommon memory and indefatigable labour’ that she had acquired her remarkable attainments. Her father certainly seems to have been capable of any degree of inattention and neglect; but we should not perhaps credit too entirely all the legends which an old lady recounted to her grandchildren of the intellectual difficulties of her youth. She seems to have been encouraged by her grandmother, one of the celebrated Evelyn family, whose memory is thus enigmatically but still expressively enshrined in the diary of the author of _Sylva_:—‘Under this date,’ we are informed, ‘of the 2d of July 1649, he records a day spent at Godstone, where Sir John’ (this lady’s father) ‘was on a visit with his daughter;’ and he adds, ‘Mem. The prodigious memory of Sir John of Wilts’s daughter, since married to Mr. W. Pierrepont.’ The lady who was thus formidable in her youth deigned in her old age to write frequently, as we should now say,—to open a ‘regular commerce’ of letters, as was said in that age—with Lady Mary when quite a girl, which she always believed to have been beneficial to her, and probably believed rightly; for she was intelligent enough to comprehend what was said to her, and the old lady had watched many changes in many things.