The following specimens may be given of the liveliness of mind which imparted an agreeable flavour both to her correspondence and her conversation:—­

   ON READING IN THE NEWSPAPERS THE MARRIAGE OF MR. GELL TO MISS GILL, OF
   EASTBOURNE.

   At Eastbourne Mr. Gell, From being perfectly well,
   Became dreadfully ill, For love of Miss Gill. 
   So he said, with some sighs, I’m the slave of your iis;
   Oh, restore, if you please, By accepting my ees.

   ON THE MARRIAGE OF A MIDDLE-AGED FLIRT WITH A MR. WAKE, WHOM, IT WAS
   SUPPOSED, SHE WOULD SCARCELY HAVE ACCEPTED IN HER YOUTH.

   Maria, good-humoured, and handsome, and tall,
      For a husband was at her last stake;
   And having in vain danced at many a ball,
      Is now happy to jump at a Wake.

’We were all at the play last night to see Miss O’Neil in Isabella.  I do not think she was quite equal to my expectation.  I fancy I want something more than can be.  Acting seldom satisfies me.  I took two pockethandkerchiefs, but had very little occasion for either.  She is an elegant creature, however, and hugs Mr. Young delightfully.’

   ’So, Miss B. is actually married, but I have never seen it in the
   papers; and one may as well be single if the wedding is not to be in
   print.’

Once, too, she took it into her head to write the following mock panegyric on a young friend, who really was clever and handsome:—­

   1.

   In measured verse I’ll now rehearse
      The charms of lovely Anna: 
   And, first, her mind is unconfined
      Like any vast savannah.

   2.

   Ontario’s lake may fitly speak
      Her fancy’s ample bound: 
   Its circuit may, on strict survey
      Five hundred miles be found.

   3.

   Her wit descends on foes and friends
      Like famed Niagara’s Fall;
   And travellers gaze in wild amaze,
      And listen, one and all.

   4.

   Her judgment sound, thick, black, profound,
      Like transatlantic groves,
   Dispenses aid, and friendly shade
      To all that in it roves.

   5.

   If thus her mind to be defined
      America exhausts,
   And all that’s grand in that great land
      In similes it costs—­

   6.

   Oh how can I her person try
      To image and portray? 
   How paint the face, the form how trace
      In which those virtues lay?

   7.

   Another world must be unfurled,
      Another language known,
   Ere tongue or sound can publish round
      Her charms of flesh and bone.

I believe that all this nonsense was nearly extempore, and that the fancy of drawing the images from America arose at the moment from the obvious rhyme which presented itself in the first stanza.