will never hold water again.”  Both these ladies, mother and daughter, had a most extraordinary habit of crediting their friends with their own wise and witty sayings; thus Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Procter would say, “Ah yes, you know, as you once said,” and then would follow something so sparkling, profound, concise, incisive, and brilliant, that you remained, eyes and mouth open, gasping in speechless astonishment at the merit of the saying you never said (and couldn’t have said if your life had depended on it), and the magnificence of the gift its author was making you.  The princes in the Arabian Nights, who only gave you a ring worth thousands of sequins, were shabby fellows compared with these ladies, who declared that the diamonds and rubies of their own uttering had fallen from your lips.  Persons who lay claim to the good things of others are not rare; those who do not only disclaim their own, but even credit others with them, are among the very rarest.  In all my intercourse with the inhabitants of two worlds, I have known no similar instance of self-denial; and reflecting upon it, I have finally concluded that it was too superhuman to be a real virtue, and could proceed only from an exorbitant superabundance of natural gift, which made its possessors reckless, extravagant, and even unprincipled in the use of their wealth; they had wit enough for themselves, and to spare for all their friends, and these were many.

At an evening party at Mrs. Montagu’s, in Bedford Square, in 1828, I first saw Mrs. Jameson.  The Ennuyee, one is given to understand, dies; and it was a little vexatious to behold her sitting on a sofa, in a very becoming state of blooming plumptitude; but it was some compensation to be introduced to her.  And so began a close and friendly intimacy, which lasted for many years, between myself and this very accomplished woman.  She was the daughter of an Irish miniature-painter of the name of Murphy, and began life as a governess, in which capacity she educated the daughters of Lord H——­, and went to Italy with the family of Mrs. R——.  When I first knew her she had not long been married to Mr. Robert Jameson, a union so ill-assorted that it restored Mrs. Jameson to the bosom of her own family, to whom her conjugal ill-fortune proved a blessing, for never did daughter and sister discharge with more loving fidelity the duties of those relationships.  Her life was devoted to her parents while they lived, and after their death to her sisters and a young niece whom she adopted.  Her various and numerous gifts and acquirements were exercised, developed, and constantly increased by a life of the most indefatigable literary study, research, and labor.  Her reading was very extensive; her information, without being profound, was general; she was an excellent modern linguist, and perfectly well versed in the literature of her own country and of France, Germany, and Italy.  She had an uncommon taste and talent for art, and as