at home, while Lady Morgan trotted her husband out after her on all occasions.  It is amusing to observe what pains the poor woman takes to persuade us that Sir Charles is a monstrous clever man.  Betsy Trotwood never labored harder to convince the world of the merits of Mr. Dick, than Lady Morgan does to obtain a place for her husband as a learned philosopher who was in advance of his age, or, as she prettily expresses it in French; (she likes to parade her French, this excellent wife,) “il devancait son siecle.”  This mania for inlaying her writing with French scraps rises with her Ladyship to a species of insanity. “Est il possible that I am going to Italy?” she exclaims.  How much more forcible is this than the vulgar “Is it possible?” When the Duke of Sussex comes into a party, he does not excite anything so common-place as a great sensation; no,—­it is a “grand mouvement!” Praise bestowed on her is an “eloge.”  She would not condescend to speak of such things as folding-doors,—­they are better as “grands battants.”  A change of scene is a “changement de decoration.”  Mrs. Opie, whom she sees at a party, is not in full dress, but “en grand costume.”  The three Messrs. Lygon look very “hautain.”  And while driving with Lady Charleville, instead of having a charming conversation on the road, her Ladyship has it “chemin faisant.” Allons, mi lady! you prefer that style of writing. Chacun a son gout! Mais we, nous autres, love mieux the plain old Saxon langue.

If Lady Morgan had called this volume “Passages from my Card-Basket,” there would have been some harmony between the title and the contents.  The three hundred and eighty-two pages are for the most part taken up with frivolous notes from great people, either inviting her Ladyship to parties or apologizing for not having called.  These are interspersed with a number of philoprogenitive letters to Lady Clarke,—­her Ladyship’s sister,—­in which, being childless herself, she expends all her bottled-up maternity on her nephews and nieces.  The little pieces of autobiography scattered here and there are painfully vivacious.  The poor old lady smirks and capers and ogles, until one becomes sick of this sexagenarian agility.  Paris beheld no more melancholy spectacle than that of poor old Madame Saqui dancing on the tight-rope for a living at the age of eighty-five, and displaying her withered limbs and long white hair to a curious public.  We do not feel any particular degree of veneration for that Countess of Desmond “who lived to the age of a hundred and ten, and died of a fall from a cherry-tree then,” as Mr. Thomas Moore sings.  Well, Lady Morgan dances on any amount of literary tight-ropes, and climbs any number of intellectual cherry-trees.  It is a sight more surprising than pleasant; and her Ladyship must not be astonished that the critics should not treat her with the respect due to her age, when she herself labors so hard to make them forget it.