_Country Quarters._ This was first published in a London Sunday paper, 1848. After Lady Blessington’s death it was edited by her niece, Miss Power, and published separately. She also wrote _A Tour Through the Netherlands to Paris_, _Confessions of an Elderly Gentleman_, _The Belle of a Season_, and edited for several years Heath’s ‘Book of Beauty,’ ‘The Keepsake,’ and another annual entitled, ‘Gems of Beauty.’ Miss Power says in her memoir, “I believe that for some years she made, on an average, somewhere about a thousand a year; some years a good deal above that sum.” Jerdan states that he has known her to enjoy from her pen an amount between £2,000 and £3,000 per annum; and adds that her title and her social tact had considerable influence in commanding high prices. Lady Blessington’s strange life may be said to have been written in three chapters: the first as dark and terrible as any in ‘Wuthering Heights’; the second as gorgeous as any in the novels of D’Israeli; and the last like a handful of leaves torn from ‘Vanity Fair.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Sickly childhood.] Beauty, the heritage of the family, was, in her early youth, denied to Marguerite: her eldest brother and sister were singularly handsome and healthy children, while she, pale, weakly, and ailing, was for years regarded as little likely ever to grow to womanhood; the precocity of her intellect, the keenness of her perceptions, and her extreme sensitiveness, all of which are so often regarded, more especially among the Irish, as the precursive symptoms of an early death, confirmed this belief, and the poor, pale, reflective child was long looked upon as doomed to a premature grave. The atmosphere in which she lived was but little congenial to such a nature. Her father, a man of violent temper, and little given to study the characters of his children, intimidated and shook the delicate nerves of the sickly child, though there were moments--rare ones, it is true--when the sparkles of her early genius for an instant dazzled and gratified him. Her mother, though she failed not to bestow the tenderest maternal care on the health of the little sufferer, was not capable of appreciating her fine and subtile qualities, and her brothers and sisters, fond as they were of her, were not, in their high health and boisterous gayety, companions suited to such a child. At a very early age, the powers of her imagination had already begun to develop themselves. She would entertain her brothers and sisters for hours with tales invented as she proceeded; and at last, so remarkable did this talent become, that her parents, astonished at the interest and coherence of her narrations, constantly called upon her to _improviser_ for the entertainment of their friends and neighbors, a task always easy to her fertile brain; and, in a short time, the little neglected child became the wonder of the neighborhood.