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80 sorrow in her laughter as there had been of yore. Among the most intimate of her new acquaintances were Mr. and Mrs, Fuseli; and the account has been preserved of at least one pleasure party to which she accompanied them. This was a masked ball, and young Lavater, then in England, was with them. Masquerades were then at the height of popularity. All sorts and conditions of men went to them. Beautiful Amelia Opie, in her poorest days, spent five pounds to gain admittance to one given to the Russian ambassadors. Mrs. Inchbald, when well advanced in years, could enter so thoroughly into the spirit of another as to beg a friend to lend her a faded blue silk handkerchief or sash, that she might represent her real character of a passée blue-stocking. Mary's gaiety on the present occasion was less artificial than it had been at the Dublin mask.

As a rule, the most regular frequenters of Mr. Johnson's house, and the leaders of conversation during his evenings, were Reformers. Men like Paine and Fuseli and Dr. Priestley were, each in his own fashion, seeking to discover the true nature of human rights. As the Reformation in the sixteenth century had aimed at freeing the religion of Christ from the abuses and errors of centuries, and thus restoring it to its original purity, so the political movement of the latter half of the eighteenth century had for object the destruction of arbitrary laws and the re-establishment of government on primary principles. The French Revolution and the American Rebellion were but means to the greater end. Philosophers, who systematised the dissatisfaction which the people felt without being able to trace it to its true source,