The
stiff grin of those French statues, or ogling Canova Graces, is by no
means more happy, I think, than the smile of a skeleton, and not so
natural. Those little pavilions in which the old roues sported were
never meant to be seen by daylight, depend on't. They were lighted up
with a hundred wax-candles, and the little fountain yonder was meant
only to cool their claret. And so, my first impression of Berry's
place of abode was rather a dismal one. However, I heard him in the
salle-a-manger drawing the corks, which went off with a CLOOP, and that
consoled me.

As for the furniture of the rooms appertaining to the Berrys, there
was a harp in a leather case, and a piano, and a flute-box, and a huge
tambour with a Saracen's nose just begun, and likewise on the table
a multiplicity of those little gilt books, half sentimental and half
religious, which the wants of the age and of our young ladies have
produced in such numbers of late. I quarrel with no lady's taste in that
way; but heigho! I had rather that Mrs. Fitz-Boodle should read "Humphry
Clinker!"

Besides these works, there was a "Peerage," of course. What genteel
family was ever without one?

I was making for the door to see Frank drawing the corks, and was
bounced at by the amiable little black-muzzled spaniel, who fastened his
teeth in my pantaloons, and received a polite kick in consequence, which
sent him howling to the other end of the room, and the animal was just
in the act of performing that feat of agility, when the door opened
and madame made her appearance. Frank came behind her, peering over her
shoulder with rather an anxious look.

Mrs. Berry is an exceedingly white and lean person. She has thick
eyebrows, which meet rather dangerously over her nose, which is Grecian,
and a small mouth with no lips--a sort of feeble pucker in the face as
it were. Under her eyebrows are a pair of enormous eyes, which she is
in the habit of turning constantly ceiling-wards. Her hair is rather
scarce, and worn in bandeaux, and she commonly mounts a sprig of laurel,
or a dark flower or two, which with the sham tour--I believe that is the
name of the knob of artificial hair that many ladies sport--gives her
a rigid and classical look. She is dressed in black, and has invariably
the neatest of silk stockings and shoes: for forsooth her foot is a fine
one, and she always sits with it before her, looking at it, stamping it,
and admiring it a great deal. "Fido," she say