quadrangles, I could believe this," said Lady Hungerford. "But here, in the very midst of nous autres, as we are called

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"Ah! those happynous autres,"" I cried. Though I see and feel all their superiority, I know not what precise qualification it is that gives them their claims to that mysterious appellation. For I see people possessing it as a title of the first consequence, who are yet of not much consequence themselves, nay, some of them of no consequence at all, but really in downright poverty; while others, rolling in riches, toil often in quest of it in vain. Now, I should have thought that riches, at least, which command every thing else, might command this also."

"Riches," replied Lady Hungerford, rather contemptuously, "are the last things which can confer it upon any one not fitted for it. It cannot be bought with money, and you might as well suppose a Dutch skipper, refined, as Congreve says, from a whale fishery, could have sculptured the Venus de Medicis, as that a man on account of his wealth could pass muster as a man of fashion.”

"But riches would surely go a good way towards it," observed I.

"Of themselves, not a step," said she; "nay, in many instances they would be much in the way, by enabling people to make themselves ridiculous, which persons of fashion never are. I allow, how

ever, they are sometimes very convenient, so as occasionally to make their possessors tolerated, but no more, and only on particular occasions."

"Well, but,” said I, "it was but yesterday that I dined with Mr. Grogram, the great scrivener, who asked me, because I was Lord Castleton's secretary, to meet Lord Rufus Urban. Rufus has this tournure, I suppose?"

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Lord

Nobody more of it; scarcely any one so much. But what then ?"

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Why, Mr. Grogram is the most vulgar of mankind-vulgar in mind, in person, in manners, conversation, and dress; and yet Lord Rufus seemed quite at home with him; nay, enjoyed his dinner, pronounced the claret excellent, and in the evening played several rubbers at whist; though, even to me, Mr. Grogram and all his company were of the very coarsest tone."

Lady Hungerford smiled, and said—“ You will soon find this out. As high men in rank and breeding as Lord Rufus, will sometimes, nay, not unfrequently, lay aside their refinement for the sake of a very good dinner, which I suppose Mr. Grogram gave."

"The best possible," said I, "as to cookery; indeed the cooks and most of the matériel were from Paris."

"Just so; and as to the whist, pray did Mr. Grogram win or lose ?"

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"O! lost considerably, and well he might, for he cannot play at all-nay, even revoked."

"Perhaps on purpose," said Lady Hungerford. "All dans les règles. But these are mysteries which cannot yet be explained to you; you will know them in time. Meanwhile should Mr. Grogram attempt to get into White's, his low birth, and lower manners, would for ever defeat such an attempt, and, notwithstanding their seeming intimacy, Lord Rufus would be the first to blackball him."

"What an advantage then is birth," said I, thinking I had now discovered one at least of the ingredients of fashion.

"Be not misled by that supposition," replied my instructress; "recollect Pope :

What will ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards?

Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.'

"So it is with real fashion. All the birth in the world will not necessarily give that cool self-possession, that air of internal superiority to all awkward feelings, or what Chesterfield calls that intrepidity of assurance, which genuine fashion confers. Why the Duchess of herself,

though full of humble piety, and an angel in goodness, handsome withal, as well as among the highest of the high born, is not considered as ton."

Beat out of this, I tried talents and genius, and mentioned one or two persons eminent in literature,

and the arts, whom I had already seen in fashionable parties, both at dinners and assemblies.

Lady Hungerford would not admit even this as a passport.

"Men of genius certainly, and very respectable people," said she;" and if their object is to be enrolled in the legitimate ranks of real high life, deserving a better fate; for they are, for the most part, mere lions, who have their day, and, unless for something more than their literature, will be soon forgotten in their persons, though their works may survive. With this class of persons a single piece of awkwardness, an exhibition of mauvaise honte (to which most of them, from want of breeding, are liable); even an ill-cut coat; in short, the least vulgarity impedes their advance, if it do not absolutely annihilate them.”

I now felt repulsed right and left, and asked if personal beauty, manners, grace, and accomplishments, would not avail ?

“Manners,” said Lady Hungerford, “ will undoubtedly do much, combined with other requisites; but even they, not of themselves alone. The manners of a man utterly of no consequence, will be of themselves worse than of no consequence, for they may seem to claim a distinction not legitimate. Beauty may create admiration with the men, and envy with the women, but will not confer the privileges of noblesse we speak of. Miss Pidcock was

beautiful as a Houri, and as such was intended to

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acquire fashion herself, and bestow it upon her sisters. But her name was against her; she was produced by a vulgar aunt; Lord Petronius, the arbiter elegantiarum for the time being, pronounced her a milk-maid, and there was an end of her."

"Perhaps," said I, "she was not graceful, and I own all the beauty in the world, without grace, could never win me."

"Winning," replied my shrewd patroness, goodnaturedly laughing, "is not the question, but whether grace, even the most exquisite, will alone raise a person into fashion who has no other pretension to it. Not only it will not (for how many very graceful persons do we not see neglected though looked at), and, on the other hand, how many personifications of clumsiness (large limbs, high shoulders, and enormous bon point), do we not behold in our best drawing-rooms? What ex hibitions are there also of scraggy, flat, ill-formed machines, inrolled in, and constituting what is called, the very best company! These you will meet not only in the crême, but in the crême de la crême, as it has been called, of high society."

"Good heavens !" cried I, astonished at these difficulties, "if all these qualifications fail, what will succeed ?"

Nothing," answered the lady, "but, in addition to the qualifications we have been canvassing, that indescribable something which we know not