kshelves with so pleasant a flavour of the old world that it seemed
at the time as if yesterday not to-day was the all-important hour, and
one gladly submitted to the subtle charm of the past--its silent veils,
its quiet incantations of dust and healing cobweb. The phase is but a
passing one with most of us, and we must soon feel that to dwell at
length upon each one of the pretty old fancies and folios of the writers
and explorers who were born towards the end of the last century would be
an impossible affectation; and yet a postscript seems wanting to the
sketches which have already appeared of Mrs. Barbauld and Miss
Edgeworth, and the names of their contemporaries should not be quite
passed over.

In a hundred charming types and prints and portraits we recognise the
well-known names as they used to appear in the garb of life. Grand
ladies in broad loops and feathers, or graceful and charming as nymphs
in muslin folds, with hanging clouds of hair; or again, in modest
coiffes such as dear Jane Austen loved and wore even in her youth.
Hannah More only took to coiffes and wimples in later life; in early
days she was fond of splendour, and, as we read, had herself painted in
emerald earrings. How many others besides her are there to admire! Who
does not know the prim, sweet, amply frilled portraits of Mrs. Trimmer
and Joanna Baillie? Only yesterday a friend showed me a sprightly,
dark-eyed miniature of Felicia Hemans. Perhaps most beautiful among all
her sister muses smiles the lovely head of Amelia Opie, as she was
represented by her husband with luxuriant chestnut hair piled up Romney
fashion in careless loops, with the radiant yet dreaming eyes which are
an inheritance for some members of her family.

The authoresses of that day had the pre-eminence in looks, in gracious
dress and bearing; but they were rather literary women than anything
else, and had but little in common with the noble and brilliant writers
who were to follow them in our own more natural and outspoken times;
whose wise, sweet, passionate voices are already passing away into the
distance; of whom so few remain to us.[4] The secret of being real is no
very profound one, and yet how rare it is, how long it was before the
readers and writers of this century found it out! It is like the secret
of singing in perfect tune, or of playing the violin as Joachim can play
upon it. In literature, as in music, there is at times a certain
indescribable tone of abs