whom you are acquainted—is most admirable,
and leaves nothing to be desired. That faculty
which is called tact, is one of the most valuable
a young matron can possess. For, how
many are the occasions for the use of this quality
which every day presents? Every day there
are difficulties to be encountered which can be
dealt with by no set of rules, however full and
minute, that could by possibility be laid down.
The degree of consideration with which different
people, or even the same people, differently
situated, are to be treated; the subjects
concerning which it is judicious to speak before
this person, and those again which must be
skilfully tabooed in the presence of that person; are
these matters which can be regulated by law?
When Tallowfield, the millionnaire, who made
his money by candles, is present, is it good to
discuss the best way of lighting a room? Or
is it judicious to speak of the bad results
attendant on intermarriages, before Lord and
Lady Ricketts, who are first cousins, and whose
children have literally not got a leg, worthy of
the name, to stand upon? Again, in cases of
verbal invitation—always a difficult kind of thing
to deal with—you have to take the measure of
the person giving the invitation, and to decide
on the spot whether you will accept or no; and
if the latter decision be arrived at, then must
you have an excuse ready. What quality but
tact can in this case supply you with the right
answer at the right moment? When two deadly
enemies meet at our matron's afternoon
tea-table—she desiring to stand well with both the
one and the other—can anything, save tact,
help her? I could spend a day in eulogising
this great quality. Subtle, indescribable,
indefinable, not to be analysed or reduced
to parts by the most crafty scholiast, or the
ablest word-dissector, it is a gift which those
who possess are born with, and which, like
genius—as indeed in a humble sort it is—cannot
be acquired by any amount of labour or
study.

I am not sure but that all the high qualities
which a woman of the world ought to possess
are comprised and included in this one of tact.
She who has it, has everything; for even if
aught of importance is wanting to make her
panoply complete, she will—if provided with
tact—pick it up in a moment. The opinions of
the hour, and the language in which it is
considered proper to express them, change now-a-days
very rapidly. It is, moreover, an inevitable
necessity of the life of the day, that the
opinions of those who mix in it should be of the
fashionable tinge, and should be issued to society
in the peculiar language of the period. Thus,
it really requires considerable watchfulness and
elasticity of mind to keep pace and be up to the
mark at the right moment.

Am I beginning to convince you? You
talked in your last letter of a young lady who
should be gifted with such qualities as simplicity
and spontaneousness—by-the-by, spontaneity,
if you will allow me, is a more fashionable word
—as the kind of person whom you would like
for a daughter-in-law. Sir, such an one might,
indeed, suit you as a daughter-in-law—though I
hope in time to be able to influence your opinions
to such an extent that even that, may hardly be
said with truth—but even if, as you are at
present constituted, she did suit you as a daughter-in-law,
would she suit me as a wife? Simple,
spontaneous! Why, she would be getting into
social scrapes from morning to night, and would
not be able to hold her own in the world for half
an hour, far less to advance in it.

My dear father, you are not unacquainted
with military matters, or at any rate you are
as well acquainted with them as I am. Is it
not the case that when an officer requires a
horse which is to serve him as a charger, he
selects an animal of which he can feel secure at
all times, and in all moments of
emergency—when the guns are firing, when the drums are
rattling, the trumpets braying, and when masses
of troops are being manœuvred into all sorts of
perplexing forms, not without much noise and
tumult? A young untrained horse, of whatever
merit otherwise, would never do; it would start
and tremble at every unaccustomed sight or
sound, would become wild and unmanageable,
would, perhaps, finally take the bit between its
teeth and bolt. Well, sir, to take a part in the
social warfare in which some of us engage,
requires a training somewhat similar to that
which the war-horse goes through. At a London
dinner-table the blazing lights, the crashing
sounds, the continuous roar of conversation,
make great demands upon the nerves of those
who would remain calm and self-possessed; and
I think you will admit that for one who is obliged
continually to come in contact with such elements
of perturbation, it is good to have had a training
of considerable length and of the most solid
nature. By which I mean to say, in two words,
that the better-half who is to ornament my
dinner-table must be—to say it respectfully—a
thoroughly experienced charger, and not (still
respectfully) an untrained filly, of however great
promise.

Enough on this subject for the present.
You need not be afraid, respected sir, that I
shall trouble you much about this matrimonial
project of mine. There is, indeed, little to
be said about it. I have endeavoured to show
you in how many ways Miss Baskerville is
fitted to be the wife of one who is so
essentially a modern as I am, she being herself
essentially a modern also. This was the chief
thing which it was necessary to write about.
For the rest, things go smoothly enough.
Ours is not a courtship distinguished by parental
opposition, stolen interviews, bribings of
soubrettes, agonising partings, and rapturous
meetings, such as I have read of in books
which describe the manners of another period.
There are few hindrances in our way, and such as
do exist are of a different sort. We think it good,
for instance, to delay our union until we are a
little bit richer than we are at present. Alicia
is of opinion, and I quite agree with her, that it
would be injudicious for us to set up an