rforms a diabolical incantation. The Brighton Pavilion
was tenanted; Ranelagh and the Pantheon swarmed with dancers and masks;
Perdita was found again, and walked a minuet with the Prince of Wales.
Mrs. Clarke and the Duke of York danced together--a pretty dance. The
old Duke wore a jabot and ailes-de-pigeon, the old Countess a hoop,
and a cushion on her head. If haply the young folks came in, the elders
modified their recollections, and Lady Kew brought honest old King
George and good old ugly Queen Charlotte to the rescue. Her ladyship
was sister of the Marquis of Steyne: and in some respects resembled that
lamented nobleman. Their family had relations in France (Lady Kew had
always a pied-a-terre at Paris, a bitter little scandal-shop, where les
bien pensants assembled and retailed the most awful stories against the
reigning dynasty). It was she who handed over le petit Kiou, when
quite a boy, to Monsieur and Madame d'Ivry, to be lanced into Parisian
society. He was treated as a son of the family by the Duke, one of whose
many Christian names, his lordship, Francis George Xavier, Earl of Kew
and Viscount Walham, bears. If Lady Kew hated any one (and she could
hate very considerably) she hated her daughter-in-law, Walham's widow,
and the Methodists who surrounded her. Kew remain among a pack of
psalm-singing old women and parsons with his mother! Fi donc! Frank was
Lady Kew's boy; she would form him, marry him, leave him her money if he
married to her liking, and show him life. And so she showed it to him.

Have you taken your children to the National Gallery in London, and
shown them the "Marriage a la Mode?" Was the artist exceeding the
privilege of his calling in painting the catastrophe in which those
guilty people all suffer? If this fable were not true, if many and many
of your young men of pleasure had not acted it, and rued the moral,
I would tear the page. You know that in our Nursery Tales there is
commonly a good fairy to counsel, and a bad one to mislead the young
prince. You perhaps feel that in your own life there is a Good Principle
imploring you to come into its kind bosom, and a Bad Passion which
tempts you into its arms. Be of easy minds good-natured people! Let us
disdain surprises and coups-de-theatre for once; and tell those good
souls who are interested about him, that there is a Good Spirit coming
to the rescue of our young Lord Kew.

Surrounded by her court and royal attendants, La Reine Marie