Her form was small and slight, her features wrinkled with age; but the burden of eighty years had not impaired her gracious smile, nor lessened the fire of her eyes, the clearest, the brightest, and the most searching I have ever seen. They were singularly dark--positively black they seemed as they looked forth among carefully-trained tresses of her own white hair; and absolutely sparkled while she spoke of those of whom she was the venerated link between the present and the long past. Her manner on entering the room, while conversing, and at our departure, was positively spritely; she tripped about from console to console, from window to window, to show us some gift that bore a name immortal, some cherished reminder of other days--almost of another world, certainly of another age; for they were memories of those whose deaths were registered before the present century had birth. She was clad, I well remember, in a rich dress of pea-green silk. It was an odd whim, and contrasted somewhat oddly with her patriarchal age and venerable countenance, yet was in harmony with the youth of her step and her increasing vivacity, as she laughed and chatted, chatted and laughed; her voice strong and clear as that of a girl. S. C. HALL: ‘A Book of Memories of Great Men and Women of the Age.’ London: Virtue & Co., 1871. * * * * * [Sidenote: Relations with Macaulay.] She was a very kind friend to me from childhood. Her notice first called out my literary tastes. Her presents laid the foundation of my library. She was to me what Ninon was to Voltaire--begging her pardon ... and yours for comparing myself to a great man. She really was a second mother to me. I have a real affection for her memory. I, therefore, could not possibly write about her, unless I wrote in her praise; and all the praise which I could give to her writings, even after straining my conscience in her favor, would be far indeed from satisfying any of her admirers. T. B. MACAULAY: _Letter to W. Napier_, in the former’s ‘Life and Letters,’ by G. Otto Trevelyan. New York: Harper & Bros., 1876. * * * * * [Sidenote: A comment on ‘Cælebs.’] Have you read ‘Cælebs’? It has reached eight editions in so many weeks, yet literally it is one of the very poorest sort of common novels, with the drawback of dull religion in it. Had the religion been high and flavored, it would have been something. I borrowed this ‘Cælebs in Search of a Wife,’ from a very careful, neat lady, and returned it with this stuff written in the beginning:-- If ever I marry a wife I’d marry a landlord’s daughter, For then I may sit in the bar, And drink cold brandy-and-water. CHARLES LAMB: _Letter to Coleridge_, in ‘Final Memorials’ of the former, by T. N. Talfourd. London: Edward Moxon, 1848. * * * * * [Sidenote: George Eliot’s opinion.]