iage and appearance was dignified and majestic to
the highest degree. I knew her for upwards of thirty years, and never
saw her depart from a peculiar style of dress, which she had adopted
with the finest instinct of what was personally becoming as well as
graceful and beautiful in itself. She was so superior in this point to
her sex generally, that, having found that which was undoubtedly her own
proper individual costume, she never changed the fashion of it. Her
dress deserved to be called (what all dress should be) a lesser fine
art, and seemed the proper expression in clothes of her personality, and
really a part of herself. It was a long, open robe, over an underskirt
of the same material and color (always moonlight silver gray, amethyst
purple, or black silk or satin of the richest quality), trimmed with
broad velvet facings of the same color, the sleeves plain and tight
fitting from shoulder to wrist, and the bosom covered with a fine lace
half-body, which came, like the wimple of old mediaeval portraits, up
round her throat, and seemed to belong in material and fashion to the
clear chin-stay which followed the noble contour of her face, and the
picturesque cap which covered, without concealing, her auburn hair and
the beautiful proportions of her exquisite head.

This lady knew no language but her own, and to that ignorance (which one
is tempted in these days occasionally to think desirable) she probably
owed the remarkable power and purity with which she used her mother
tongue. Her conversation and her letters were perfect models of spoken
and written English. Her marriage with Mr. Montagu was attended with
some singular circumstances, the knowledge of which I owe to herself.
She was a Yorkshire widow lady, and came with her only child (a little
girl) to visit some friends in London, with whom Basil Montagu was
intimate. Mrs. S---- had probably occasionally been the subject of
conversation between him and her hosts, when they were expecting her;
for one evening soon after her arrival, as she was sitting partly
concealed by one of the curtains in the drawing-room, Basil Montagu came
rapidly into the room, exclaiming (evidently not perceiving her), "Come,
where is your wonderful Mrs. S----? I want to see her." During the whole
evening he engrossed her attention and talked to her, and the next
morning at breakfast she laughingly complained to her hosts that he had
not been content with that, but had tormented her i