d be
crowned by Lady Miller with all due solemnity with myrtle wreaths. But
there is surely the same spirit abroad at the close of the nineteenth as
marked the last years of the eighteenth century. The pretenders are not
dead. They have not vanished out of the land. There are the Lady Bettys
who put on the guise of youth, and the Mrs. Macaulays who put on the
appearance of great literary talent. They pose as authorities on
literature and politics, and they are often centres of a _coterie_ who
are fully as subservient as that which Lady Miller gathered round her in
her villa at Batheaston. They may not kneel to receive a laurel crown
from the hands of their patroness; but, none the less, they carry
themselves with the air of those who are superior to common folk, and
can afford to look down from a vantage-ground on their brothers and
sisters in the field of literature, who, making no effort to secure a
hearing, sometimes gain one, and win hearts also. It may be when the
memory of many has perished with their work, that those who have
laboured with a true heart for the good of others, and not for their own
praise and fame, may, being dead, yet speak to generations yet to come.

CHAPTER III.

ANOTHER SIDE OF THE PICTURE.

There was not a cloud in the sky on that December night, and the "host
of heaven" shone with extra-ordinary brilliancy. The moon, at her full,
was shedding her pure silvery light upon the terraces and crescents
of the fair city of the West, and there were yet many people passing to
and fro in the streets. The link-boys had but scant custom that night,
and the chair-men found waiting for the ladies at Wiltshire's Rooms less
irksome than when, as so often happened, they had to stand in bitter
cold and darkness long after the hour appointed for them to take up
their burdens and carry them to their respective homes.

In a room in Rivers Street a woman sat busily at work, with a mass of
papers before her--musical scores and printed matter, from which she was
making swift copy with her firm, decided hand. She was so absorbed in
the business in hand, that she did not feel the weariness of the task
before her. Copying catalogues and tables could not be said to be an
interesting task; but Caroline Herschel never weighed in the balance the
nature of her work, whether it was pleasant or the reverse. It was her
work, and she must do it; and it was service for one she loved best in
the world, and therefo