whom I had once boarded for six months, and for whom I felt a real friendship. She used to confide to me her troubles, and told me she had been happily married in Marseilles, and as long as she lived there her husband behaved well. He removed to Paris, was well established there in a good business, but he took to gambling, reduced himself to poverty, and then committed some crime which sent him to prison for several years. Meanwhile she supported herself and two sons, and when they were sufficiently educated she meant to leave the country, before her husband was liberated. Not finding her in Paris, I supposed that she had accomplished her purpose. My husband and I went to Rouen on our way to England, and took the steamer on the Seine for our conveyance. On that boat I found my friend Madame Reybert, then on her way to Brazil. She had intended to leave Paris three months sooner, but had been detained by her care of a friend, who had been made insane by grief for the loss of her husband and the total want of sympathy in all around her. I told her of the lady who threw herself out of a window from the same cause. She exclaimed, "That must be my friend, Madame Piton; she did that on her journey with a selfish monster who had no pity for her." Then she gave a moving account of the inhumanity of that man and the indifference of her maid. "I cured

her by love and sympathy. One of her delusions was mistaking me for a sister, whom she loved very much, and the happiness which that gave her aided in her recovery. She will return to her mother and sister in Brazil, and there I am going to live near them, for they are old friends of mine." A happy sequel this, to the history of both those ladies!

I

RECOLLECT a notable instance of the mis

chief done by a lady's supposing herself to have a head for business, when she really knew nothing about it; and as I have already described the rise and progress of the town of Milford, under the management of the Honorable Charles Greville, I will now tell of its decline and fall under the misrule of Lady Mansfield, whose second husband was the Honorable Robert Fulk Greville, brother of Charles, and heir to his uncle, Sir William Hamilton. Her first husband was the celebrated jurist, Lord Mansfield, who showed what his feelings had been towards her, by giving directions that after his death his heart should be taken out and buried by his first wife. She had tried in vain to rule her first husband, but when she married her second, she took the reins into her own hands, and he submitted entirely to her government. As soon as the Milford estate came into her possession, she announced her dissatisfaction with the management of it, and resolved to change everything.

It was in vain that her agent told her, that the building up of a town on her land had increased its value fourfold; she disapproved of long leases and low rents, and would alter all that. So down she came to Milford, with her husband and children, governess and servants, and put up at the Nelson Hotel. She began by disputing the leases which were granted, some for three lives, others for ninety-nine years. The ground-rent had been made low in order to induce people to build. She could not comprehend the policy of this, so she summoned her tenants to her presence. The upper class went, expecting to be received as guests, and to be complimented on the benefit they had bestowed on the estate, by building good houses upon it. Great, therefore, was their disappointment and indignation when they were received on the same footing as the humblest householder there, and told that their leases should all be broken. They appealed to the honorable husband of her Ladyship, but he sanctioned all she did. Every inhabitant became her enemy, though the event proved that she could not put her threat into execution.

Not satisfied with this aggressive act, she next. attacked the Royal Dock-Yard, which it had cost Charles Greville the greatest exertion of his interest with the government to have established there, and which, with the whale fishery, was the

cause of the rapid growth of the town. A piece of rough, rocky land, of no value to Lady Mansfield, or to any one else, had been wrongfully enclosed within the boundary of the dock-yard, and she claimed it so vehemently, that a commissioner was sent down from London to look into the matter. He looked too deeply into the affair for the benefit of her Ladyship. He reported that the site was wholly unfit for a building-yard, and recommended the removal of the whole concern to the other side of the haven, and several miles higher up, where he had discovered a tract of land belonging to Government, and admirably adapted to the purpose. In due time orders came to take down the vessels, then on the stocks, and remove them to the new dock-yard, near Pembroke, with all the materials belonging to his Majesty.

My father was so tormented by Lady Mansfield, that he also removed his fishery from Milford, and the town was left without any business of consequence. A large house, built by my father, was burnt down as soon as completed, and as her ladyship had disputed his lease, she could not oblige him to rebuild it, so the ultimate loss was hers. She did, at last, so ruin the place, that she never dared to show her face there again, and it was said of Milford, that you might fire a cannon down the Main street, without danger of hitting any one.