it; but her successor to-day who goes to a lecture on Hegel or Euripides when she would prefer cards and conversation; who sits, perplexed and doubtful, through a performance of "A Doll's House" when "Little Lord Fauntleroy" represents her dramatic preference; who tries to read Matthew Arnold and Tourguéneff, and now and then Mr. Pater, when she really enjoys Owen Meredith, and "Booties' Baby," and the Duchess, pays a heavy price for her enviable reputation. "The true value of souls is in proportion to what they can admire," says Marius the Epicurean; but the true value of our friends' distinction is in proportion to the books we behold in their hands. We have hardly yet outgrown the critical methods of the little heroine of "Mademoiselle Panache," who knows that Lady Augusta is accomplished because she has seen her music and heard of her drawings; and, as few of us resemble the late Mr. Mark Pattison in his unwillingness to create a good impression, we naturally make an effort to be taken at our best. Mr. Payn once said that Macaulay had frightened thousands into pretending they knew authors
