"137 Regent Street, Friday evening, January 24th, 1846. "After some argument, with a reluctant heart, I have persuaded myself that it is better to say adieu to you on paper, partly from a fear that I might not find you alone, should I call to-morrow (my last day in England), and partly because my visit to you the other day forms a sweet memory, which I would not willingly risk overlaying with one less sympathetic.

"As a man is economical with his last sixpence, I am a miser of what is probably my last remembrance of you, believing as I do that I shall never again cross the Atlantic.

"I unwillingly forego, however, my expression of thanks and happiness for your delightful reception of my daughter's visit; and you are too tenderly human not to value what I could tell you of your impression on my mulatto servant. She saw you to love you, as any human being would who saw you as she did, without knowing the value of rank. Little Imogen talked a great deal of her visit when she returned, and your kind gift to her will be treasured. "I hope, dear Lady Blessington, that the new though sad leaf of life that death has turned over for you will not be left wholly uncopied for the world. You would make so sweet a book, if you did but embody the new spirit in which you now think and feel. Pardon my mention of it; but I thought, while you were talking to me the other day, as if you could scarce be conscious how, with the susceptibilities and fresh view of genius, you were looking upon the mournful web weaving around you.

"I leave here on Sunday morning for Portsmouth, to embark, with the most grateful feeling for the kindness with which you have renewed your friendship toward me.

N. P. WILLIS."

"New York, May 8th.

"In your gay and busy life, you will scarce think me gone when this letter reports my arrival on the other side of the world, seven thousand miles of travel having been accomplished between my letter and myself.

"The bearer of this is a person in whom Mrs. W is a good deal interested, an American actress. I hope to interest you in her, and I am sure you will at a glance understand a character which has been misunderstood and misinterpreted very often by the world. You may have heard her name, for she was in England some few years since, and played some melodramatic parts at one of the theatres; but she was then very young, and very ill directed as well as badly introduced. She has since made great advances in her art, and is now, I think, a very clever actress, or can easily be made one, by encouragement and judicious management. She is very well off in point of fortune, I believe, and can afford to wait her opportunity to appear to advantage in England. There are other circumstances which should be told you, however, which may come to you in the shape of malicious rumor, but the truth of which should, and will, commend her to your pity and kindness. She is the daughter of a person of low character, and has been brought up by vul

gar and stupid people. She is excessively handsome too, and with these elements of ruin she has been considered easy prey by most of the roué's who have seen her on the stage only; my unwavering belief, however, and that of the American public, is, that a more innocent girl to this hour does not exist. She has traveled all over this immense country, playing every where, and has kept her name free from all reproach, even among the young men who have known her most intimately. I think she will always do so, and is a safe object of interest and regard. Would it be asking too much to request you to allow her to call on you, and get your counsel as to her theatrical career in London? She wants fame more than money; and with your wide-spreading influence, you can as easily make her the fashion as give her advice. One glance at her will show you that she is clever; and a more complete 'bon enfant,' midshipman-hearted creature does not exist. I am sure you will like her; and if she plays but tolerably, her very remarkable beauty will, I think, soften the critics' judgment, and propitiate her audience. I introduce her to you in the confident belief that you will think her, considering the circumstances by which she has been surrounded, a curiosity, as well as an object of kindly interest and protection. I shall write to Count D'Orsay to beg him to aid in giving her a vogue, and on his kindness of heart in any matter I know well I can rely. N. P. WILLIS.”

"Dublin, January 25th, 1848.

"Your very kind note was forwarded to me here by Saunders and Ottley, and I need scarce say it gave me great pleasure. One of the strongest feelings of my life was the friendship you suffered me to cherish for you when I first came to England; and while I have no more treasured leaf in my memory than the brilliant and happy hours I passed in Seamore Place, I have, I assure you, no deeper regret than that my indiscretion (in Pencilings) should have checked the freedom of my approach to you. Still, my attachment and admiration (so unhappily recorded) are always on the alert for some trace that I am still remembered by you, and so you will easily fancy that the kind friendliness of your note gave me unusual happiness. My first pleasure when I return to town will be to avail myself of your kind invitation, and call at Gore House.

"By the same post which brought me your note I received another from America, signed Lady Blessington,' and I must perform a promise to the writer of it, at the risk of your thinking both her and myself very silly, if not intrusive. She is one of the most beautiful girls I ever saw, and the daughter of one of our few acknowledged gentry, a gentleman who lives upon his fortune on the She chances to be singularly like your picture by

L. Paris, much more like than most originals are like their pictures. She has been told of this so often, and complimented so much in consequence, that her head is quite turned (literally indeed, for she always sits in the attitude of the picture), and for two years I have refused to do what she has prevailed

on me to do at last, to ask you to write to her!! She thinks of nothing but the hope of procuring this honor, and I positively think it has become a monomania. So now I have put myself into the 'category of bores,' but I have discharged my errand, and, after you have laughed at it, you will, I presume, think no more about it; still, if you took it into your head to gratify her, I should feel it as a very condescending and important favor to myself. She is a high-spirited, romantic, fearless girl, tête montée, as you may suppose, but magnificently beautiful; and as she has a large fortune, and will probably travel the first year of her marriage, she would doubtless call on you soon in London, and present her thanks very eloquently. Her name is Miss W-of G- H; and if you should write, if you will be kind enough to inclose the note to me, I will forward it.

"I am in Ireland, picking up materials for one of Virtue's pictorial books, and next week I go to the Giants' Causeway, &c. I shall be in the country perhaps a fortnight, and in London probably in the course of a month.*

"N. P. WILLIS."

"Manor House, Lee, Kent., Monday, 18th.

"I inclose you a copy of a letter I have sent to Captain Marryatt, who is abroad. I don't know whether you have seen his attack, but I have been advised to print and send to my friends the letter you now receive, while I am waiting for his answer. It will eventually be published, but meantime his abuse rests on my reputation. I scarce regret his attack, since it gives me an opportunity, once for all, of meeting these matters in a tangible shape; and, once for all, I shall carry the point well through.

"I have written quietly, and given Marryatt an opportunity to explain, which I hope he will do; but an explanation I must have. Pray write me your opinion of my document, for I am not much skilled in this kind of correspondence. N. P. WILLIS."

I had some conversation with Tom Campbell on the subject of the abovementioned undertaking of Willis "to do Ireland" for Mr. Virtue. Campbell worked himself into one of his fits of red-hot wrath at the idea of an American making a run over to Dublin, and taking on him to enlighten an English public on so dark a subject as the history, antiquities, monuments, manners, and customs of the people of Ireland. What could he know of Ireland? How could any American know any thing about it?" On occasions of this sort, I was accustomed to add little fuel to the fire of the poet's amusing outbursts of anger, excited without any apparently sufficient provocation. I defended the undertaking of Mr. Willis, and the selection of an American for it, on the ground that he was naturally free from English prejudices, and a stranger to Irish feeling in general, and had actually been studying Ireland, politically, socially, and topographically, upward of fourteen days on the spot. Fourteen days!" exclaimed Campbell; "all the knowledge he possesses of Ireland might have been acquired in fourteen hours."

R. R. M.

VOL. II.-P

"I send you a rough draught of my idea for Lady Buckingham's picture. If you think it will do, I will elaborate it before you want it; it is at present a little indistinct.

66

Fonblanque has written me a note, which, without giving me ground for a quarrel, is very unjustifiable, I think. Another friend of yours has written me too, and a more temperate, just (though severe), and gentlemanly letter I never read. He gives me no quarter; but I like him the better for having written it, and he makes me tenfold more ashamed of those silly and ill-starred letters.

"I shall soon have the pleasure to see you, I trust, and remain, dear Lady Blessington, ever faithfully yours, N. P. WILLIS."

FREDERICK MANSELL REYNOLDS, ESQ.

This gentleman, the son of a well-known dramatist, owes his principal literary celebrity to a remarkable work, which attracted a good deal of attention a few years ago, entitled "Miserimus."

Mr. Reynolds was rather an amateur in literature than a professor. In his hands "The Keepsake" made its first appearance -the first and last of the tribe of Annuals-some thirty years ago. He continued to edit it till the year 1836, when Mrs. Norton became editress. In 1837, Lady E. S. Wortley became editress. For many years of his latter life Mr. Reynolds resided on the Continent, and for some time in Jersey. He died at Fontainebleau in 1850. A lady who was well acquainted with the friends of Lady Blessington thus speaks of Mr. Reynolds:

"He was a man of very kind heart and generous disposition, hospitable, obliging, and very true in his friendship, but extremely eccentric, and especially so during the latter years of his life. His extreme sensibility and nervous susceptibility had so augmented with years and ailments, that he lived latterly with his family, wholly retired from the world. His last illness was long, and of painful suffering. He was very highly educated, and well informed, and had a good knowledge and excellent taste in painting and music, though not a performer in either art. He versified gracefully, but his prose writings partook much, in general, of a forced style and a fantastic humor. He has left a young wife, who was one of the most perfect models I ever saw of conjugal affection, obedience, attention, patience, and devotion,

whom he had known from her childhood, and whose education he had superintended."

LETTERS FROM MANSELL REYNOLDS, ESQ., TO LADY BLESSINGTON. "Hillan House, St. Helen's, Jersey, March, 1847. "MY DEAR LADY BLESSINGTON,-After having so recently seen you, and being so powerfully and so painfully under the influence of a desire never again to place the sea between me and yourself and circle, I feel almost provoked to find how much this place suits me in every physical respect. But truth is truth, and certainly I feel that this place is made for me; for illness has effected greater inroads on my strength than all the doctors in the land' can ever repair.

"You and Count D'Orsay speak kindly and cheerfully to me; but I am un malade imaginaire, for I do not fear death; on the contrary, I rather look to it as my only hope of secure and lasting tranquillity.

"In the lull which has hitherto accompanied my return to this delicious climate, I have had time and opportunity for ample retrospection, and I find that we have both laid in a stock of regard for Count D'Orsay which is immeasurable: any body so good-natured and so kind-hearted I never before saw; it seems to me that it should be considered an inestimable privilege to live in his society. When you write to me, pray be good enough to acquaint me whether you have been told verbatim what a lady said on the subject; for praise so natural, hearty, and agreeable was never before uttered in a soliloquy, which her speech really was, though I was present at the time.

"At the risk of repeating, I really must tell it to you. After Count D'Orsay's departure from our house, there was a pause, when it was broken by exclaiming, 'What a very nice man!' I assented in my own mind, but I was pursuing also a chain of thought of my own, and I made no audible reply. Our ruminations then proceeded, when mine were once more interrupted by her saying, 'In fact, he is the nicest man I ever saw.'

"This is a pleasant avowal to me, I thought, but still I could not refrain from admitting she was right. Then again, for a third time, the mental machinery of both went to work in silence, until that of the lady reached a ne plus ultra stage of admiration, and she ejaculated in an ecstasy, 'Indeed, he is the nicest man that can possibly be !'

"The progress of this unconsciously expressed panegyric from the modest positive to the rhapsodical superlative struck me as extremely amusing, and I only now derive pleasure from repeating it to you because it is literally true, and utterly unembellished by me.

"I have written to Heath on the subject of the Royal' Book of Beauty, to endeavor to dissuade him from the use of an epithet so vulgarized, and to induce him to substitute the word 'Regal,' ever entirely putting aside your association with a title in such bad taste.

"With our kindest and most affectionate regards to yourself and Count