Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/230

 by the rapturous praise of critics and reviewers. Thackeray, indeed, professed to think the sumptuous ladies, who loll and languish in the pages of the year-book, underclad and indecorous; but this was in the spirit of hypercriticism. Hear rather how a writer in "Fraser's Magazine" describes in a voice trembling with emotion the opulent charms of one of the Countess of Blessington's "Beauties":—

"There leans the tall and imperial form of the enchantress, with raven tresses surmounted by the cachemire of sparkling red; while her ringlets flow in exuberant waves over the full-formed neck; and barbaric pearls, each one worth a king's ransom, rest in marvellous contrast with her dark and mysterious loveliness."

"Here's richness!" to quote our friend Mr. Squeers. Here's something of which it is hard to think a public could ever tire. Yet sixteen years later, when the Countess of Blessington died in poverty and exile, but full of courage to the end, the "Examiner" tepidly observed that the probable extinction of the year-book "would be the least of the sad regrets attending her loss."