ably a source of considerable profit, and she takes her place confidently and complacently as one of the literary celebrities of her day."
Greville's instinctive unkindness leaves him often wide of the mark, but on this occasion we can only say that he might have spoken his truths more humanely. If Lady Blessington helped to create the demand which she supplied, if she turned her friendships to account, and made of hospitality a means to an end (a line of conduct not unknown to-day), she worked with unsparing diligence, and with a sort of desperate courage for over twenty years. Rival Books of Beauty were launched upon a surfeited market, but she maintained her precedence. For ten years she edited the "Keepsake," and made it a source of revenue, until the unhappy bankruptcy and death of Heath. In her annuals we breathe the pure air of ducal households, and consort with the peeresses of England, turning condescendingly now and then to contemplate a rusticity so obviously artificial, it can be trusted never to offend. That her standard of art (she had no standard of letters) was acceptable to the British public is proved
