in spoiling the little ones, cramming them with sugar-plums and rich cake whenever she has the chance, and nullifying mamma's punishments by surreptitious gifts and goodies. She is the dearly beloved of our childish recollections; and to the last days of our life we cherish the remembrance of the kind old lady with her beaming smile, taking out of her large black reticule, or the more mysterious recesses of her unfathomable pocket, wonderful little screws of paper which her withered hands thrust into our chubby fists; but we can understand now what an awful nuisance she must have been to the authorities, and how impossible she made it to preserve anything like discipline and the terrors of domestic law in the family.

The old lady who remains a mere child to the end; who looks very much like a faded old wax doll with her scanty hair blown out into transparent ringlets, and her jaunty cap bedecked with flowers and gay-coloured bows; who cannot rise into the dignity of true womanliness; who knows nothing useful; can give no wise advice: has no sentiment of protection, but on the contrary demands all sorts of care and protection for herself—she, simpering and giggling as if she were fifteen, is by no means an old lady of the finest type. But she is better than the leering old lady who says coarse things, and who, like Béranger's immortal creation, passes her time in regretting her plump arms and her well-turned ankle and the lost time that can never be recalled, and who is altogether a most unedifying old person and by no means nice company for the young.

Then there is the irascible old lady, who rates her servants and is free with full-flavoured epithets against sluts in general; who is like a tigress over her last unmarried daughter, and, when crippled and disabled, still insists on keeping the keys, which she delivers up when wanted only with a snarl and a suspicious caution. She has been one of the race of active housekeepers, and has prided herself on her exceptional ability that way for so long that she cannot bear to yield, even when she can no longer do any good; so she sits in her easy chair, like old Pope and Pagan in Pilgrim's Progress, and gnaws her fingers at the younger world which passes her by. She is an infliction to her daughter for all the years of her life, and to the last keeps her in leading-strings, tied up as tight as the sinewy old hands can knot them; treating her always as an irresponsible young thing who needs both guidance and control, though the girl has passed into the middle-aged woman by now, shuffling through life a poor spiritless creature who has faded before she has fully blossomed, and who dies like a fruit that has dropped from the tree before it has ripened.

Twin sister to this kind is the grim female become ancient; the gaunt old lady with a stiff backbone, who sits upright and walks with a firm tread like a man; a leathery old lady, who despises all your weak slips of girls that have nerves and headaches and cannot walk their paltry mile without fatigue; a desiccated old lady, large-boned and lean, without an ounce of superfluous fat about her, with keen eyes yet, with which she boasts that she can thread a needle and read small print by candlelight; an indestructible old lady, who looks as if nothing short of an earthquake would put an end to her. The friend of her youth is now a stout, soft, helpless old lady, much bedraped in woollen shawls, given to frequent sippings of brandy and water, and ensconced in the chimney corner like a huge clay figure set to dry. For her the indestructible old lady has the supremest contempt, heightened in intensity by a vivid remembrance of the time when they were friends and rivals. Ah, poor Laura, she says, straightening herself; she was always a poor creature, and see what she is now! To those who wait long enough the wheel always comes round, she thinks; and the days when Laura bore away the bell from her for grace and sweetness and loveableness generally are avenged now, when the one is a mere mollusc and the other has a serviceable backbone that will last for many a year yet.

Then there is the musical old lady, who is fond of playing small anonymous pieces of a jiggy character full of queer turns and shakes, music that seems all written in demi-semi-quavers, and that she gives in a tripping, catching way, as if the keys of the piano were hot. Sometimes she will sing, as a great favour, old-world songs which are almost pathetic for the thin and broken voice that chirrups out the sentiment with which they abound; and sometimes, as a still greater favour, she will stand up in the dance, and do the poor uncertain ghosts of what were once steps, in the days when dancing was dancing and not the graceless lounge it is now. But her dancing-days are over, she says, after half-a-dozen turns; though, indeed, sometimes she takes a frisky fit and goes in for the whole quadrille:—and pays for it the next day.

The very dress of old ladies is in itself a study and a revelation of character. There are the beautiful old women who make themselves like old pictures by a profusion of soft lace and tender greys; and the stately old ladies who affect rich rustling silks and sombre velvet; and there are the original and individual old ladies, who dress themselves after their own kind, like Mrs. Basil Montagu, Miss Jane Porter, and dear Mrs. Duncan Stewart, and have a cachet of their own with which fashion has nothing to do. And there are the old women who wear rusty black stuffs and ugly helmet-like caps; and those who affect uniformity and going with the stream, when the fashion has become national—and these have been much exercised of late with the strait skirts and the new bonnets. But Providence is liberal and milliners are fertile in resources. In fact, in this as in all other sections of humanity, there are those who are beautiful and wise, and those who are foolish and unlovely; those who make the best of things as they are, and those who make the worst, by treating them as what they are not; those who extract honey, and those who find only poison. For in old age, as in youth, are to be found beauty, use, grace and value, but in different aspects and on another platform. And the folly is when this difference is not allowed for, or when the possibility of these graces is denied and their utility ignored.

VOICES.

Far before the eyes or the mouth or the habitual gesture, as a revelation of character, is the quality of the voice and the manner of using it. It is the first thing that strikes us in a new acquaintance, and it is one of the most unerring tests of breeding and education. There are voices which have a certain truthful ring about them—a certain something, unforced and spontaneous, that no training can give. Training can do much in the way of making a voice, but it can never compass more than a bad imitation of this quality; for the very fact of its being an imitation, however accurate, betrays itself like rouge on a woman's cheeks, or a wig, or dyed hair. On the other hand, there are voices which have the jar of falsehood in every tone, and which are as full of warning as the croak of the raven or the hiss of the serpent. These are in general the naturally hard voices which make themselves caressing, thinking by that to appear sympathetic; but the fundamental quality strikes up through the overlay, and a person must be very dull indeed who cannot detect the pretence in that slow, drawling, would-be affectionate voice, with its harsh undertone and sharp accent whenever it forgets itself.

But without being false or hypocritical, there are voices which puzzle as well as disappoint us, because so entirely