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244 to ask questions judiciously: and it is a first requisite to make people feel it is easy to answer you; and, also, that their answer reflects credit on themselves. You see that I am studying my part as future dame de château. I hope, in time, to make my house the most brilliant in London; but I do not agree with Lord Marchmont in thinking that wealth is the only thing requisite. Wealth is to luxury what marble is to the palace—it must be there, as the first material; but taste, and taste only, can direct its after-use. The light arch, and the graceful column, owe their exquisite proportion to the skill with which they are modelled. But I am wandering away from the assertion that I was about to make; namely, that, with all the appliances of cheerfulness, with all the means of wit, the chief portion of the "table-talk" turned upon individual and general grievances. Each person was the most injured individual under the sun. Swift was, however, the one that most excited my sympathy. There is a stern melancholy in his