And they are so ingenious in discovering your perfections! It is not alone the rich color of your hair, the arch of your eyebrow, or the symmetry of your instep, Kitty, but even the secret workings of your fancy, the fitful playings of your imagination: these they understand by a kind of magic. I really believe that the reason Englishmen do not comprehend women is that they despise and look down upon them. Foreigners, on the other hand, adore and revere them! There is a kind of worship paid to the sex abroad that is most fascinating. One reason for all this may be that in England there are so many roads to ambition quite separated from female influence. Now, here this is not the case. We are everything abroad, Kitty. Political, literary, artistic, fashionable,--as we will. We can be fascinating and go everywhere, or exclusive and only admit a chosen few. We can be deep in all the secrets of State, and exhausted with all the cares of the cabinet, or can be _lionnes_, and affect cigars and men society, talk scandal and _coulisses_, wear all the becoming caprices of costume, and be even more than men in independence. I see--or I fancy that I see--your astonishment at all that I am telling you, and that you half exclaim, "Where and how did Mary Anne learn all this?" I 'll tell you, my dearest Kitty, since even the expansion of heart to my oldest friend is not sweeter to me than the enjoyment of speaking of one whose very name is already a spell to me. You must know, then, that after various incidents, too numerous to recount, we left Brussels for Liège, where poor mamma was taken so ill that we were forced to remain several weeks. This, of course, threw a gloom over our party, and deprived me of the inestimable pleasure I should have felt in visiting the scenes so graphically described in Scott's delightful "Quentin Durward." As it was, I did contrive to make acquaintance with the old palace of the prince bishops, and brought away, as souvenir, a very pretty lace lappet and a pair of gold earrings of antique form, which I wanted greatly to suit a _moyen âge_ costume that I have just completed, and of which I shall speak hereafter. Liège, however, did not agree with any of us. Mamma never slept at night; papa did little else than sleep day and night; poor James overworked himself at study; and Cary and myself grew positively plain! so that we started at last for Aix-la-Chapelle, intending to proceed direct to the Rhine. On arriving, however, at the "Quatre Saisons" Hotel, pa found an excellent stock of port wine, which an Englishman, just deceased, had brought over for his own drinking, and he resolved to remain while it lasted. There were fortunately only seven dozen, or we should not have got away, as we did, in three weeks.