Where, or under what circumstances, my parents had first become acquainted with General La Fayette I do not know. I myself never saw him; but I know that it was during a visit to La Grange, his estate in France, that my mother first met Miss Frances Wright, one of two sisters, his wards. I believe she became acquainted with Camilla Wright, the sister, at the same time. It is odd, considering the very close intimacy that took place between my mother and Frances Wright, that I never knew anything of the parentage and family of these ladies, or how they came to be wards of General La Fayette. But with Miss Frances Wright I did become subsequently well acquainted. She was in many respects a very remarkable personage. She was very handsome in a large and almost masculine style of beauty, with a most commanding presence, a superb figure, and stature fully masculine. Her features both in form and expression were really noble. There exists--still findable, I suppose, in some London _fonds de magasin_--a large lithographed portrait of her. She is represented standing, with her hand on the neck of a grey horse (the same old gig horse that had drawn my parents and myself over so many miles of Devonshire, Somersetshire, and Monmouthshire roads and cross roads--not that which so nearly made an end of us near Lynmouth, but his companion), and, if I remember rightly, in Turkish trousers. But these particulars of her bodily form and presentment constituted the least remarkable specialties of her individuality. She was unquestionably a very clever woman. She wrote a slender octavo volume, entitled _A Few Days in Athens_, which was published by Longman. It was little more than a _brochure_, and it is many years since I have seen it, but the impression that it was very clever abides in my mind. I remember the fact that the whole edition was sold. And the mention of this book reminds me of a circumstance that seems to show that my parents must have become to a considerable degree intimate with these wards of General La Fayette at some period preceding the visit to La Grange, which exercised in the sequel so large an influence over my own, and my mother’s, and brothers’ future. This circumstance is that I recollect my father to have been in communication with the Longmans on behalf of Miss Wright in respect to her work.