er that vulgar
people are a part of our trials in this life. As that delightful man,
the Dean of St. George's, says, they are snares for our feet; and their
subservient admiration of us is a dangerous and a subtle temptation.
Read this letter again, and believe me, my dearest John, your
affectionate and unhappy mother,

'Charlotte Hinton.'

I shall not perform so undutiful a task as to play the critic on my
excellent mother's letter. There were, it is true, many new views of
life presented to me by its perusal, and I should feel sadly puzzled
were I to say at which I was more amused or shocked--at the strictness
of her manners, or the laxity of her morals; but I confess that the part
which most outraged me of all was the eulogy on Lord Dudley de Vere's
conversational gifts. But a few short months before, and it is possible
I should not only have credited but concurred in the opinion; brief,
however, as had been the interval, it had shown me much of life; it
had brought me into acquaintance, and even intimacy, with some of the
brightest spirits of the day; it had taught me to discriminate between
the unmeaning jargon of conventional gossip and the charm of a society
where force of reasoning, warmth of eloquence, and brilliancy of wit
contested for the palm; it had made me feel that the intellectual gifts
reserved in other countries for the personal advancement of their owner
by their public and ostentatious display, can be made the ornament and
the delight of the convivial board, the elegant accompaniment to the
hours of happy intercourse, and the strongest bond of social union.
So gradually had this change of opinion crept over me that I did not
recognise in myself the conversion; and indeed had it not been for my
mother's observations on Lord Dudley, I could not have credited how far
my convictions had gone round. I could now understand the measurement by
which Irishmen were estimated in the London world. I could see that if
such a character as De Vere had a reputation for ability, how totally
impossible it was for those who appreciated him to prize the great and
varied gifts of such men as Grattan and Curran, and many more.

Lost in such thoughts, I forgot for some moments that O'Grady's letter
lay open before me. It was dated Chatham, and written the night before
he sailed. The first few lines showed me that he knew nothing of
my duel, having only received my own letter with an account of the
steeplechase. He wr