ment is made up of all nations; and when you get into her drawing-room, you imagine you are in the first story of the Tower of Babel. A Hungarian servant takes your name at the door; he gives it to an Italian, who delivers it to a Frenchman; the Frenchman to a Swiss; and the Swiss to a Polander; so that by the time you get to her ladyship's presence, you have changed your name five times without the expense of an act of parliament.'

In a letter written after Lady Mary's death, the same writer says :

'Lady Mary W. Montagu returned to England, as it were, to finish where she had began. I wish she had given us an account of the events that filled the space between. She had a terrible distemper the most virulent cancer ever heard of, which soon carried her off. I met her at my Lady Bute's in June, and she then looked well; in three weeks after, at my return to London, I heard she was given over. The hemlock kept her drowsy and free from pain; and the physicians thought, if it had been given early, it might have saved her.

'She left her son One Guinea. He is too much of a sage to be concerned about money, I presume. When I first knew him a rake and a beau, I did not imagine he would addict himself to rabbinical learning, and then travel all over the East, the great itinerant savant of the world. One has read that the great believers in the transmigration of souls suppose a man who has been rapacious and cunning does penance in the shape of a fox; another, cruel and bloody, enters the body of a wolf; but I believe my poor cousin, in his pre-existent state, having broken all moral laws, has been sentenced to suffer in all the various characters of human life. He has run through them all successfully enough. His dispute with Mr Needham was communicated to me by a gentleman of the museum, and I think he will gain no laurels there; but he speaks as decisively as if he had been bred at Pharaoh's court in all the learning of the Egyptians. He has certainly very uncommon parts; but too much of the rapidity of his mother's genius.'

We shall conclude with a few specimens, to which hundreds more might be added, in proof of Lady Mary's wit, sagacity, and satirical powers. The first is addressed to her husband in their early life, and may be called an exhortation to impudence :—

'I am glad you think of serving your friends: I hope it will put you in mind of serving yourself. I need not enlarge upon the advantages of money; everything we see and everything we hear puts us in remembrance of it. If it were possible to restore liberty to your country, or limit the encroachments of the prerogative, by reducing yourself to a garret, I should be pleased to share so glorious a prerogative with you; but as the world is, and will be, 'tis a sort of duty to be rich, that it may be in one's power to do good-riches being another word for power; towards the obtaining of which the first necessary qualification is impudence, and (as Demosthenes said of pronunciation in oratory) the second is impudence, and the third still impudence! No modest man ever did or ever will make his fortune. Your friend Lord Halifax, R. Walpole, and all other remarkable instances of quick advancement, have been remarkably impudent. The ministry is like a play at court: there's a little door to get in, and a great crowd without, shoving and thrusting who shall be foremost; people who knock others with their elbows, disregard a little kick of the shins, and still thrust heartily forwards, are sure of a good place. Your modest man stands behind in the crowd, and is shoved about by everybody, his clothes torn, almost squeezed to death, and sees a thousand get in before him that don't make so good a figure as himself. If this letter is impertinent, it is founded upon an opinion of your merit, which, if it is a mistake, I would not be undeceived; it is my interest to believe (as I do) that you deserve everything, and are capable of everything; but nobody else will believe it if they see you get nothing.'

To her daughter she writes in this candid and

reasonable tone on the relation between parent and child :

was a

'I am so far presuaded of the goodness of your heart, I have often had a mind to write you a consolatory epistle on my own death, which I believe will be some affliction, though my life is wholly useless to you. That part of it which we passed together you have reason to remember with gratitude, though I think you misplace it: you are no more obliged to me for bringing you into the world, than I am to you for coming into it, and I never made use of that commonplace (and, like most commonplace, false) argument as exacting any return of affection. There mutual necessity on us both to part at that time, and no obligation on either side. In the case of your infancy there was so great a mixture of instinct, I can scarce even put that in the number of the proofs I have given you of my love; but I confess I think it a great one if you compare my after-conduct towards you with that of other mothers, who generally look on children as devoted to their pleasures, and bound by duty to have no sentiments but what they please to give them; playthings at first, and afterwards the objects on which they may exercise their spleen, tyranny, or ill-humour. I have always thought of you in a different Your happiness was my first wish, and the pursuit of all my actions, divested of all selfish interest so far. I think you ought, and believe you do, remember me as your real friend.'

manner.

Only one more, on the philosophy of second child

hood:

'Age, when it does not harden the heart and sour the temper, naturally returns to the milky disposition of infancy. Time has the same effect on the mind as on the face. The predominant passion, the strongest feature, becomes more conspicuous from the others retiring; the various views of life are abandoned, from want of ability to preserve them, as the fine complexion is lost in wrinkles; but as surely as a large nose grows longer, and a wide mouth wider, the tender child in your nursery will be a tender old woman, though perhaps reason may have restrained the

appearance of it till the mind, relaxed, is no longer capable of concealing its weakness.'

Besides her letters, Lady Mary left many poems, a few trifling essays, and a short piece, entitled an 'Account of the Court of George I. at his Accession ;' which is written in a gay, bold style, and highly seasoned with scandalous gossip of a personal nature. But it is on her letters that her fame as a writer

most certainly rests. As models of the epistolary style, so easy, familiar, and elegant, no less than as striking pictures of foreign scenery and manners, and fashionable gossip, the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu must ever maintain a high place in the literature of Great Britain.

LETTERS

OF

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.

LETTER I.

To the Countess of Mar.

Rotterdam, Aug. 3, O. S. 1716.

I FLATTER myself, dear sister, that I shall give you some pleasure in letting you know that I have safely passed the sea, though we had the ill-fortune of a storm. We were persuaded by the captain of the yacht to set out in a calm, and he pretended there was nothing so easy as to tide it over; but, after two days slowly moving, the wind blew so hard that none of the sailors could keep their feet, and we were all Sunday night tossed very handsomely. I never saw a man more frighted than the captain.

For my part, I have been so lucky, neither to suffer from fear nor sea-sickness; though, I confess, I was so impatient to see myself once more upon dry land, that I would not stay till the yacht could get to Rotterdam, but went in the long-boat to Helvoetsluys, where we had voitures to carry us to the Brill. I was charmed with

B