the theories of these benevolent reformers.  Except Queen Elizabeth, of glorious memory, I do not think a woman can have existed who combined the love of things futile and serious to the same degree as Mrs. K——.  Her feminine taste for fashionable society and the frivolities of dress, together with her sober and solid studies of the gravest sort and her devotion to the speculations of her friends Owen and Combe, constituted a rare union of contrasts.  She was a remarkable instance of the combination exemplified by more than one eminent person of her sex, of a capacity for serious study, solid acquirements, and enlightened and liberal views upon the most important subjects, with a decided inclination for those more trifling pursuits supposed to be the paramount interests of the female mind.  She was the dear friend of my dear friend Miss S——­, and corresponded with her upon the great subject of social progress with a perfect enthusiasm of theoretical reform.

                                   GREAT RUSSELL STREET, November 14th
     DEAREST H——­,

Thank you a thousand times for your kindness in consenting to come to us.  We are all very happy in the hope of having you, nor need you be for a moment nervous or uncomfortable from the idea that we shall receive or treat you otherwise than as one of ourselves.  I have left my mother and my aunt in the room which is to be yours, devising and arranging matters for you.  It is a very small roost, dear H——­, but it is the only spare room in our house, and although it is three stories up, it is next to mine, and I hope good neighborhood will atone for some deficiencies.  With regard to interfering with the routine or occupations of the family, they are of a nature which, fortunately for your scruples, renders that impossible.  There is but one thing in your letter which rather distressed me:  you allude to the inconveniences of a woman traveling in mail coaches in December, and I almost felt, when I read the sentence, what my aunt Dall told me after I had requested you to come to us now, that it was a want of consideration in me to have invited you at so ungenial a season for traveling.  I had one reason for doing so which I hope will excuse the apparent selfishness of the arrangement.  Toward the end of the spring I shall be leaving town, I hope to come nearer your land, and the beginning of our spring is seldom much more mild and inviting or propitious for traveling than the winter itself.  Then, too, the early spring is the time when our engagements are unavoidably very numerous; to decline going into society is not in my power, and to drag you to my balls (which I love dearly) would, I think, scarce be a pleasure to you (whom I love more), and to go to them when I might be with you would be to run the risk of destroying my taste for the only form of intercourse with my fellow-creatures which is not at present irksome to me.  Think, dear H——­, if ceasing to dance I should cease to care for universal