among his special associates.  Lady W——­ was strikingly handsome in person, and extremely attractive in her manners.  She was tall and graceful, the upper part of her face, eyes, brow, and forehead were radiant and sweet, and, though the rest of her features were not regularly beautiful, her countenance was noble and her smile had a peculiar charm of expression at once winning and mischievous.  My father said she was very like her fascinating mother, the celebrated Miss Farren.  She was extremely kind to me, petting me almost like a spoiled child, dressing me in her own exquisite riding-habit and mounting me on her own favorite horse, which was all very delightful to me.  My father and mother probably thought the acquaintance of these distinguished members of the highest English society advantageous to me.  I have no doubt they felt both pride and pleasure in the notice bestowed upon me by persons so much my superiors in rank, and had a natural sympathy in my enjoyment of all the gay grandeur and kindly indulgence by which I was surrounded at Heaton.  I now take the freedom to doubt how far they were judicious in allowing me to be so taken out of my own proper social sphere.  It encouraged my taste for the luxurious refinement and elegant magnificence of a mode of life never likely to be mine, and undoubtedly increased my distaste for the coarse and common details of my professional duties behind the scenes, and the sham splendors of the stage.  The guests at Heaton of whom I have a distinct remembrance were Mr. and Lady Harriet Baring, afterward Lord and Lady Ashburton.  I knew them both in after-life, and liked them very much; Mr. Baring was highly cultivated and extremely amiable; his wife was much cleverer than he, and in many respects a remarkable woman.  The beautiful sisters, Anne and Isabella Forrester, with their brother Cecil, were at Heaton at this time.  They were celebrated beauties:  the elder, afterward Countess of Chesterfield, was a brunette; the younger, who married Colonel Anson, the most renowned lady-killer of his day, was a blonde; and they were both of them exquisitely pretty, and used to remind me of the French quatrain—­

    “Vous etes belle, et votre soeur est belle;
     Entre vous deux, tout choix serait bien doux. 
     L’Amour etait blond, comme vous,
     Mais il aimait une brune, comme elle.”

They had beautiful figures as well as faces, and dressed peculiarly and so as to display them to the greatest advantage.  Long and very full skirts gathered or plaited all round a pointed waist were then the fashion; these lovely ladies, with a righteous scorn of all disfigurement of their beauty, wore extremely short skirts, which showed their thorough-bred feet and ankles, and were perfectly plain round their waists and over their hips, with bodies so low on the shoulders and bosom that there was certainly as little as possible of their beautiful persons concealed.  I remember wishing it were consistent with her comfort and the