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110 the importance attached to minutiæ. His lordship suddenly quitted a friend's house, where he was to have paid a visit, without any cause satisfactory to a host being assigned. But much ingenuity might have been exerted without the right cause being discovered; it was, that his valet had not packed up the set of neckcloths marked the same as the shirts.

Within the last few years what alterations have taken place in "the glass of fashion, and the mould of forms." The Duchess of Gordon brought in a style—bold, dashing, and reckless, like herself. The Duchess of Devonshire took the opposite—soft, languid, and flattering: the exclusives established a stoical school—cold, haughty, and impayable. The reform era has brought a more popular manner. There has been so much canvassing going on, that conciliation has become a habit, and the hustings has remodelled the drawing-room. But Diana Vernon is a creature formed by no conventional rules; she has been educated by her own heart amid hardships and difficulties; and if nature has but given the original good impulse, and the strength of mind to work it out, hardships and difficulties will only serve to form a character of the loftiest order. Again, there is that tender relationship between the widowed father and the only girl, in which Scott so much delights. But, if the cradle be lonely which lacks a mother at its