careful to describe the toilet of the Princess Charlotte, whom he
had seen in church 'in a Pelisse and Bonnet of the same colour of
cloth as the Boys' Dress jackets, trimmed with blue satin ribbons;
the hat or Bonnet, Mr. Spittal said, was a Parisian slouch, and had
a plume of three white feathers.' But all this leaves a blank
impression, and it is rather by reading backward in these old musty
letters, which have moved me now to laughter and now to impatience,
that I glean occasional glimpses of how she seemed to her
contemporaries, and trace (at work in her queer world of godly and
grateful parasites) a mobile and responsive nature. Fashion moulds
us, and particularly women, deeper than we sometimes think; but a
little while ago, and, in some circles, women stood or fell by the
degree of their appreciation of old pictures; in the early years of
the century (and surely with more reason) a character like that of
my grandmother warmed, charmed, and subdued, like a strain of
music, the hearts of the men of her own household. And there is
little doubt that Mrs. Smith, as she looked on at the domestic life
of her son and her stepdaughter, and numbered the heads in their
increasing nursery, must have breathed fervent thanks to her
Creator.

Yet this was to be a family unusually tried; it was not for nothing
that one of the godly women saluted Miss Janet Smith as 'a veteran
in affliction'; and they were all before middle life experienced in
that form of service. By the 1st of January 1808, besides a pair
of still-born twins, children had been born and still survived to
the young couple. By the 11th two were gone; by the 28th a third
had followed, and the two others were still in danger. In the
letters of a former nurserymaid--I give her name, Jean Mitchell,
honoris causa--we are enabled to feel, even at this distance of