To this note was appended a pen-and-ink vignette by Lady Seymour representing the three “little Shuckburghs,” with large heads and cauliflower wigs, sitting at a round table and voraciously scrambling for mutton chops dressed by Mary Stedman, who was seen looking on with supreme satisfaction, while Lady Shuckburgh appeared in the distance in evident dismay.  A crushing rejoinder closed this correspondence:—­

“Madam,—­Lady Shuckburgh has directed me to acquaint you that she declines answering your note, the vulgarity of which is beneath contempt; and although it may be the characteristic of the Sheridans to be vulgar, coarse, and witty, it is not that of a ‘lady,’ unless she happens to have been born in a garret and bred in a kitchen.  Mary Stedman informs me that your ladyship does not keep either a cook or a housekeeper, and that you only require a girl who can cook a mutton chop.  If so, I apprehend that Mary Stedman or any other scullion will be found fully equal to cook for or manage the establishment of the Queen of Beauty.—­I am, your Ladyship’s, &c.,

“ELIZABETH COUCH (not Pouch).”

“Odd men,” quoth Bishop Thorold, “write odd letters,” and so do odd women.  The original of the following epistle to Mr. Gladstone lies before me.  It is dated Cannes, March 15, 1893:—­

“Far away from my native Land, my bitter indignation as a Welshwoman prompts me to reproach you, you bad, wicked, false, treacherous Old Man! for your iniquitous scheme to rob and overthrow the dearly-beloved Old Church of my Country.  You have no conscience, but I pray that God may even yet give you one that will sorely smart and trouble you before you die.  You pretend to be religious, you old hypocrite! that you may more successfully pander to the evil passions of the lowest and most ignorant of the Welsh people.  But you neither care for nor respect the principles of Religion, or you would not distress the minds of all true Christian people by instigating a mob to Commit the awful sin of Sacrilege.  You think you will shine in History, but it will be a notoriety similar to that of Nero. I see some one pays you the unintentional compliment of comparing you to Pontius Pilate, and I am sorry, for Pilate, though a political time-server, was, with all his faults, a very respectable man in comparison with you.  And he did not, like you, profess the Christian Religion You are certainly clever.  So also is your lord and master the Devil.  And I cannot regard it as sinful to hate and despise you, any more than it is sinful to abhor him.  So, with full measure of contempt and detestation, accept these compliments from

“A DAUGHTER OF OLD WALES.”

It is a triumph of female perseverance and ingenuity that the whole of the foregoing is compressed into a single postcard.

Some letters, like the foregoing, are odd from their extraordinary rudeness.  Others—­not usually, it must be admitted, Englishmen’s letters—­are odd from their excess of civility.  An Italian priest working in London wrote to a Roman Catholic M.P., asking for an order of admission to the House of Commons, and, on receiving it, acknowledged it as follows:—­