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206 so elegant and cost so little, being bought in Rome just after the flood.

Dowager Livy responded gravely from the depths of her silver-gray silk, enlivened with pink azaleas,—

"My child, thank your stars that you are a free-born Yankee, and have no great name or state to keep up. Buckingham Palace is all very well, and I shouldn't mind calling on Mrs. Guelph, or Saxe Coburg, whichever it is, but I much prefer to be going to the house of a Radical M.P., who is lending a hand to all good works. Mrs. T. is a far more interesting woman to me than Victoria, for her life is spent in helping her fellow-creatures. I consider her a model Englishwoman,—simple, sincere, and accomplished; full of good sense, intelligence, and energy. Her house is open to all, friend and stranger, black and white, rich and poor. Great men and earnest women meet there: Mazzini and Frances Power Cobbe, John Bright and Jean Ingelow, Rossetti the poet, and Elizabeth Garrett, the brave little doctor. Though wealthy and living in an historical mansion, the host is the most unassuming man in it, and the hostess the simplest dressed lady. Their money goes in other ways, and the chief ornament