that at the close of the following year (1830), unable to control her excitement at the revolutionary news of the summer season, she hurried off again, crossed the channel, and on the 5th of the 11th month, was located in the Hôtel de Breteuil, Rue de Rivoli, very much disappointed at finding Paris so much as usual, and the Parisians not employed in killing each other. "But what," she wrote with evident mortification, "was become of the Revolution? Paris seemed as bright and peaceful as when I left it thirteen months ago!" But if bloodshed was scarce, pleasure was plentiful, and the traveller gratefully partook of that which was provided. Again she saw Lafayette, David, Humboldt, Cuvier, and Benjamin Constant. She made the acquaintance of Madame de Genlis, a really pretty old woman of eighty-seven, very unaffected, with nothing of smartness, or affected state or style about her. Ere she quitted Paris she saw that venerable lady buried. She visited St. Cloud, called on the Abbé Gregoire, and received to an interview Fenimore Cooper. One day she had a champagne dinner in the grand salon of Richard's, in the Palais Royal, and went to bed "delighted with her day." The next day was seriously spent, as her journal will show. "Went to Meeting, we had a comfortable sitting. Dined at the Champs Elysées; read aloud two letters from a pious book; after tea we fell into silence unexpectedly, and sat near an hour; a great comfort; pleased with my day." To such crowds of admirers had she to be introduced, that she was wearied outright with the formality of being made known to people; and yet she could not rest without learning everybody's name. A lion herself, she was a thorough lionhunter. "How I wish, where it is not the custom to introduce, that everyone was ticketed." And she lived in circles where, under such an arrangement, every ticket would have been interesting. Her tide of honour was at its height, when she received from the Queen an invitation for the

next evening. 'She made it a rule not to go out on first evenings, but to see her majesty she would make an exception,' she replied to La Marquise de D. dame d'honneur de la Reine, who conveyed the invitation. And accordingly she went, and found the Queen and la Princess d'Orleans, with some dames d'honneur, and the Dukes of Orleans and Nemours, spending a quiet Sunday evening. Solemnity and sabbath calm pervaded the scene. The queen, with the graceful tact of a Frenchwoman, acted the rôle of a pieuse, talked gravely of good books, and working for the poor, and imperturbably assured her guest, that one of her favourite works of literature was the life of Mary Fletcher, the methodist, lately translated into the French.

Her visit was of several weeks duration, certainly twelve, and she did not seem at all inclined to bring it to a conclusion. But her good Norwich "friends" became alarmed; they feared that Amelia Opie's heart was again taken captive by the blandishments of princes, and the allurement of the world; and they wrote to her, urging her to return lest she should be "drawn away from the simplicity" of Christian faith and manners. Taking their exhortation with humility she returned to Norwich, and having (in 1832) sold her house in St. George's, in that city, made a prolonged sojourn amongst her husband's friends in Cornwall. On the 25th of the 6th mo., 1833, she returned to Norwich, and took possession of lodgings in St. Giles's. In 1834 she went to London, and proceeded to Edinburgh and Aberdeen-at which last city she attended a General Meeting of the Friends. In 1835 she again visited the continent, visiting Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, Antwerp, Namur, Liège, Aix-laChapelle, Cologne, Bonn, Coblentz, Mayence, Weisbaden, Zurich, Lucerne, and numerous other regulation spots for tourists to frequent. Everywhere she met with Quakers enjoying themselves, and everywhere she was hailed as a person of distinction. On a steamboat which she went on

board at Mayence, she was greeted by a royal lady, and she characteristically jotted down the interview in her journal. "We went down into the handsome cabin, but were most civilly requested to leave it, as it was engaged for the Princess of Saxony. We went on board again, and I soon forgot even my sorrow, in the lovely scenery around. On the deck I had a flattering rencontre with the Princess, who attracted by my singular dress !!! opened a conversation with me. At last she asked my name; and when I said Amelia Opie, Madame Opie,' she exclaimed, 'quoi, auteur célèbre,' and then she was kinder still, had one of her own stools brought for me, and made me sit beside her." Can we not now see the dear old lady dodging about the boat, first down stairs, then on deck, taking good care that the Princess should at least see her "singular dress."

She never went again on the continent, but she was constantly quitting Norwich (where she kept her head quarters from this time till her death) for the sea-side and town. In London she was till the last petted as a curiosity. In 1840 she was at the great meeting of the Anti-Slavery convention; in 1841 she was again in London, dining with Sidney Smith at the Bishop of Durham's; flirting with O'Connell, whose magnificent person she admired even more than his eloquence; dining with Lord Brougham; visiting the Duke of Sussex; and writing "Every night this week I shall have dined out, and in parties of a most agreeable description." To the very last she was "game." game." In 1848 she went to Claremont and visited in adversity that Queen who had honoured her by calling her to her palace. In 1851 she visited Keswick, and on her return through London went to the "Great Exhibition." She was now more than eighty years old, and in consideration of her age and infirmities she was privileged to enter the palace, an hour before the time of general admission, and be wheeled about in her chair. In that world's fair she was greeted by innu

merable friends, amongst whom was Miss Berry, also in a wheel-chair. "Where did you get your chair, Mrs. Opie P I quite envy it," exclaimed Miss Berry. "Shall we have a chair race?" was the response.

But the end of her brisk, happy, successful, and most amiable life was fast approaching. From that time her infirmities increased and her health diminished, till it was with gratitude not less than sorrow that the dear friends who watched by her side saw her breathe her last-murmuring "all is peace," "all is mercy."

Amelia Opie died at midnight, at her residence, "The Castle Meadow House," Norwich, on the 2nd of December, 1853.

She was taken from the chamber in which she expired, and placed lying in her coffin in a lower apartment, there to await removal to her grave, surrounded by the silent watchful portraits of many of her most celebrated and dearest friends. Lafayette, Cooper, David, Madame de Staël, John Joseph Gurney, Stanley Bishop of Norwich, the Bishop of Durham, Sedgwick, Whewell, Mrs. Siddons. Amongst those likenesses were the portraits of some who were still in their dreary possession of worldly dignity, and some who, like the inmate of that dark coffin, had disappeared from the fretful ways of men.

As a writer Mrs. Opie is pathetic and tender, subduing our feelings in spite of her carelessness, her clumsiness, and occasional silliness. She was by far the superior of her contemporary Madame d'Arblay; but in this day when Mrs. Norton, Miss Yonge, Miss Mulock, and Miss Sewell are alive, and actively using their pens, it cannot be advanced that she has not been immeasurably surpassed.

CHAPTER IV.

WALTER SCOTT.

In the brief attempt at autobiography which the author of "Waverley" gave the world, and which is generally known as the Ashestiel Fragment, he says, with much good humour and good taste, "Every Scottishman has a pedigree. It is a national prerogative as unalienable as his pride and his poverty. My birth was neither distinguished nor sordid."

In point of descent Scott had some right to boast, if, indeed, the accident of lineage can give such right, for he was descended from more than one distinguished house, having in his veins the blood of the Rutherfords and the Swintons of Swinton, and his own male ancestors, of the family of Harden, branched off from the great Buccleuchs, in the middle of the fourteenth century. But Sir Walter's immediate ancestors were sufficiently humble, his father being only a respectable attorney in Edinburgh, and his grandfather being a farmer and cattle-jobber, who began life with the small capital of £30, which he borrowed from an old shepherd named Hogg.

Lockhart, though well acquainted with the particulars of Scott's family, states with amusing pomposity that none of Scott's progenitors "had ever sunk below the situation and character of a gentleman." Now, we see no reason why a man may not be a true gentleman, and wear the livery of a running footman, as many a "gentle" did in the feudal times; but we must contend that if the term "situation of a gentleman" means anything, it cannot be applied to the