FANNY.

29, KING STREET, ST. JAMES'S.

I do not know how right I am in saying Lady ---- married because she was
jilted, inasmuch as of my own personal knowledge I do not _know_ it; but
that she was much attached to Lord ----, whose father would not permit
the marriage, I have heard repeatedly from people who knew both the
families; and Rogers, who was very intimate with hers, told me that he
considered her marrying as she did the result of mere disappointment,
saying, "She could not have the man she loved, so she gave herself to
the man who loved her." So much in explanation of my rather rash
statement about that most beautiful lady I ever saw.

I have seen a good many handsome people, but there was a modesty, grace,
and dignity, and an expression of deep latent sentiment in that woman's
countenance, that, combined with her straight nymph-like figure, and the
sort of chastity that characterized her whole person and appearance,
fulfilled my ideal of female beauty. You will perhaps wonder at my use
of the word "chastity," as applied merely to a style of beauty; but
"chaste" is the word that describes it properly. Of all the Venuses of
antique art, the Venus of Milo, that noble and keenly intellectual
goddess of beauty, is the only one that I admire.

The light, straight-limbed Artemis is lovelier to me than the round soft
sleepy Aphrodite; and it was to the character of her figure, and the
contour of her head and face, that I applied the expression "chaste" in
speaking of Lady ----. Her sister, who is thought handsomer, and is a
lovely creature (and morally and mentally as worthy of that epithet as
physically), has not this severely sweet expression, or sweetly stern,
if you prefer it, though this implies a shade of volition, which
falsifies the application of it. This is what I especially admire in
Lady ----, who adds to that faultless Greek outline, which in its
integrity and justness of proportion seems the type of truth, an eye
whose color deepens, and a fine-textured cheek, where the blood visibly
mantles with the mere emotion of speaking and being listened to.

The first time I met her was at a dinner-party at Miss Berry's, before
her marriage. She sat by Landseer, and her great admiration for him, and
enthusiastic devotion to his fine art, in which she was herself a
proficient, lent an interest to their conversation, which exhibited
itself in her beautiful face in