One of her schemes was to board with visit was Lord Shaftesbury's at Chelsea. the agent, Mr. Ellison, but the good man The author of the "Characteristics put that out of the question, because "it charmed her with his unconventional ways could not be pryvate," with him, as " Lady" was he twenty years older," she writes, Garsay [Jersey] and Mr. Varnum" came "and I as many years younger, I would there in the summer and Lady Wentworth | lay all the traps I could to get him, his used to meet them at Whitehall Chapel. youmore and mine are soe alike. . . I In the end, the economy decided upon wish Betty had him." seems to have been an almost constant residence at Twickenham, coming to London as seldom as possible. When she and Betty did come up, plenty of kindnesses were shown them by their more prosperous relatives-"neice Arundel" and her spouse, who were living amongst the great people in Arlington Street, and others often invited them, and so did "Cousin Hanbury," one of whose entertainments is thus described: "we stayed till nere twelve at night, having a good dinner and supper and in the afternoon tea and coffy .. we played cards all day." But Lady Wentworth, as we have seen, cared little for going about, rather shunning society - as she could not keep up with its extravagances than courting

it.

But despite her almost continuous residence at Twickenham, life was evidently still a struggle, especially in winter time, when, as Lady Wentworth tells us, she was paying 50s. a chaldron for coal, and 10s. a pound for coffee. "I will leave it orfe," she writes, speaking of the latter; "for a long time, I dranck it twise and sumtimes thre timse, a day."

66

We can well fancy that under these circumstances, Christmas was no merry season. Her son's "sneaking tenants stirred up the little anger in her constitution, because they never spared a fat goose or turkey, as the tenants of other less kindly landlords did. This troublesome time," she writes in 1705, “brings aboun dance of troublesome gests. . . . I designe to be as sneakinge as I can, and doe noe works of superflewety; only what necessity foarsis." Subsequently she exclaims, “I thanck God ther is not abov three days more to the end of Christmas." The

was a sorry thought, and she asks him if it is the fashion where he is to give Chrismas boxes and New Year gifts." She can remember when Charles II. gave up the bestowal of "New Year gifts and val entines" on account of their heavy expense.

It is thoroughly characteristic of Lady Wentworth that the very letters which bemoan her neediness refer to the investment in almost every lottery that was got up, though we never hear of any luck attending her investments. Poor Betty too was bitten with the gambling spirit-she had won a pair of silk stockings in the "half-crown lottery." Here is a letter to her brother in 1710, begging for £10 for a lottery ticket:

Besides tending her flock of animal pets, music was her chief enjoyment, and a proposed visit to the opera in the winter of 1708 receives an amusing account in her next letter to Lord Raby. "Yester-" vast deal" that the season costs her son day," she writes, "I had lyke to have been ketched in a trap; your brother Wentworth had almoste parswaded me to have gon last night to hear the fyne muisick, [and] the famous Etallion sing at the rehersall of the Operer, which he assured me it was soe dark, none could see me. Indeed musick was the greatest temtation I could have, but I was afraid he deceaved me, soe Betty only went with his wife and him; and I rejoysed I did not, for thear was a vast deal of company and good light ... The Dutchis of Molbery had got the Etallian to sing and he sent an excuse, but the Dutchis of Shrosberry made him com, brought him in her coach, but Mrs. Tofts huft and would not sing becaus he had furst put it ofe; though she was thear, yet she would not, but went awaye. I wish the house would all join to humble her and not receav her again." Nicolini and Mrs. Tofts (the Camilla of "The Spectator") are here spoken of. A contemporary letter thus describes a Sunday visit of the latter to the Duke of Somerset, where "there were about twenty gentlemen and every kiss was a guinea; some took three, others four or five at that rate, but none less than one." One of the few houses Lady Wentworth was tempted to

I have spent all the money I have saved out of my allowance in little jewels... this is the last favour I will ask till I am going to be married, and then I know you will be as good as your word and give me my wedding cloathes. But pray be not frightened, for I believe it will be a long time first, if ever, except I win the £1,000 a year, for money nowadays is

the raening passion.

The various items of news and allusions to people in Lady Wentworth's letters, give us a curious insight into English so

W- made with it while 'twas sick. She brought it here every day in two little night gounds made fitt for it, and its leggs was putt into sleeves, that I had a great deal to do to keep myself grave, for her affliction was too great for me to laugh." A death was of course a still more serious trouble. Writing after such an affliction she says:

One naturally wonders how she got on with her quaint old mother-in-law, who was so anxious to find her son a wife, but who might not be so well pleased with one of his own finding. Well, Lord Strafford had soon to return to the Hague, and his wife's letters do not leave us long in doubt. Once, not long before, Lady Wentworth, in despair of her son ever getting a wife, had concluded that she "I think I ought not to have writ soe herself must be the stumbling-block. "If long a letter to you to-day, for I am sure you gave out that I was dead," she says, you'll have a very long won [cae] from "some willing wife would come forward; Lady Wentworth with very great lamenfor, continues the old lady, "she may have tation; for her monkey is dead. I have an aversion to a mother-in-law, as many been as little merry as I could since, for has, and not without reason; but I am Lady Wwas soe much troubled about sure if I had never so great an aversion to it, that she was really angry if I laughed, one before, yett after they were yours, and you may beleeve, it cou'd be no afflic next to yourselfe, none would be more tion to me, to make me melancholy and I valued by me." Here are extracts from could not cry for my life. The day it dy'd, some of Lady Strafford's earliest letters I expected Lady W- -to dinner, and to her husband: "Next to you, I believe she nether came nor sent word, and I Lady Wentworth loves me better than any stayed diner for her for some time; but of her children. . . . I love Lady Went- she would not soe much as see me that worth better than ever, for she is to me as day. But what is the most extrodinary it ware my owne mother." Then we have thing is, she has two of it's pickturs draun Lady Wentworth's opinion of her new sinc 'tis dead; won large and other in mindaughter-in-law. "I was yesterday at the atur. Now if Captain Powell could ever Lord Keeper's. I went with dear Lady oblige Lady Whe should make a Strafford, who is here now;" and later, coppy of verses upon Pug's death." The "Lady Strafford being alone, I longed to same post brought Lord Strafford a letter come back to her, for I am in the Square from his mother, full of woe and lamentafrom morning till night. I dyne and suption at the death, which would be almost there every day, and sure never was so goodhumored a creature ; she is never out of humor. She and I play'd at Pickit. I will not own she play'd better, but had better luck." Indeed of the kindliness of Lady Strafford's disposition, no one who dips into her correspondence can have a doubt. Amused at her mother-in-law's peculiarities, she never once speaks unkindly of the quaintly mannered old lady, and without boasting of goodness to her-the record of some kindly act creeps unwittingly into almost every letter she sends her husband.

We have spoken of Lady Wentworth's fondness for animals; besides the various items of society gossip which she communicated to her son, nearly every one of her letters, over a long period of years, contains some allusion to her dogs, cat, and monkey; but her many whims in regard to them are best gathered from Lady Strafford's letters. An illness in the "family" caused great commotion, and convalescence naturally afforded Lady Strafford considerable relief. "Pearl," she writes to her husband in August, 1712, "is very well again, which I am very glad of, for 'tis not to be exprest the rout Lady

comic if not so obviously sincere. The favorite was put to rest in the garden at Twickenham with a stone to mark its resting-place.

Early in 1713, Lady Strafford joined her husband at the Hague, and there are plenty of letters from Lady Wentworth to her new daughter; in the first, she exclaims, "What would I give to see Stattyra and Roxseaany together?"- Not a very happy simile this! - Lady Strafford was not long away from England, and her husband's diplomatic residence at the Hague soon ended. His attachment to the house of Stuart was, as we have already said, too well known to allow the Whig ministers of George I. to leave him as England's representative at a foreign court; so, on the Hanoverian accession, he was quickly recalled from the embassy which he had discharged with undoubted honor both to himself and his country — an embassy by which he was several thousand pounds out of pocket. But money was no longer an object with the Wentworth family; Lady Strafford had brought her husband a comfortable income, and he had himself saved a considerable sum of money during the earlier part of his diplo.

matic career. His immediate return was followed by an attempted impeachment for the share he took in negotiating the Treaty of Utrecht. After that we find him retiring from political life and settling down to live the life of a country gentleman in Yorkshire. That Lady Went worth, now getting on for seventy, did not take up residence with her son and daughter-in-law was probably due to her own choosing; she was used to Twickenham, and to a few old friends that could easily come and see her there, and so we find her living with Betty-till the latter's marriage to Lord Arundel in 1722-in the old house on a couple of hundred a year allowed her by her son. People of her age do not, as a rule, suddenly become good managers; and Lady Wentworth formed no exception to the rule; various allusions in her letters show that she was generally "hard up"- especially towards quarter-day, though a timely "advance " from her son, no doubt, kept the old dame from suffering any serious inconvenience. Here is a characteristic receipt, given by her a fortnight before Midsummer in 1728:

Received of my son Strafford, ten pound, in part of my quarter, due next midsummer. I hope God will forgive him for paying me before it is due, and breaking his resolution, and I promise to be a better manager for the future, and never to ask him before my quarter is due, only this time. My son Peter took advantage of my good nature and weedied me out of six-and-twenty shilling, which I fear he will never pay me.

ISABELLA WENTWORTH.

This is the last allusion to Lady Went. worth amongst her son's correspondence, till we find numerous letters of sympathy with him after her death, which took place in 1733; from these allusions we learn that, for some years her health had been extremely feeble, though she struggled to see and joke with her friends of former days. One of these, whose health still enabled him to keep up with the racket of society, writes sadly to Lord Strafford on the loss of dear Lady Wentworth." "'Tis no more than what might have been expected some years agoe. Yet I am perswaded every one is concerned at it that knew her; and your Lordship in particular, who has lost the most affecktionate mother that ever was.

W. T. HARDY.

From Chambers' Journal. THE COLORS OF THE STARS.

THAT must be a very careless-minded and unobservant person who, when crossing an open heath on a bright starlight night, does not linger a while to gaze at, perhaps to guess at, the innumerable luminous points glistening throughout the sky in this small patch of boundless space which we are apt to call the universe. Some, he will note, as in the Milky Way, are like shining dust sown broadcast along certain tracts of the heavens; others, gradually increasing in visible magnitude and distinctness, assume the aspect of individual and independent centres of light and who can doubt it?-of heat. He will involuntarily murmur to himself Mrs. Barbauld's lines:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star!
How I wonder what you are,
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky!

The problem of "what you are" has, with other branches of physical science, made considerable advances towards solution. To those who complain that we still know so little about natural phenomena, it may be replied that the wonder is that we know so much; and above all, that what we do know, we know as surely and certainly as we can predict that an apple, detached by a gale of wind from the branch on which it hangs, will inevitably fall to the ground.

An ordinary observer, blessed with healthy sight, and not afflicted with colorblindness, like those unfortunates who cannot distinguish the red of a cherry from the green of the leaves amidst which it has ripened, will soon perceive that every star does not shine with exactly the same hue or tint of light. Some, like the Dog Star, send forth rays of most brilliant white-veritable diamonds in the sky; others are decidedly red; others, again, beam delicate shades of blue or lilac. These diversities of color amongst the stars are more conspicuous and striking in tropical skies than in our own misty

latitudes.

The planets are not in question here; but even they differ in color. Mars presents a ruddy disc, attributed by some to the reflection of the sun's rays from a red sandstone or a red-clay surface; by others, from a red-leaved vegetation, like our own purple or crimson varieties of cab

The unsatisfactory member of society alluded to bage, coleus, and orache - the last, though

at the outset of this memoir.

a kitchen herb, being often grown for ornamental purposes. Jupiter, the giant