wear ball and court dresses made, not by the
pallid workwomen and "first hands" of the
great millinery establishments of the West-End,
but by the nimble fingers of Fanny
Tarlatan. Also to confide to her sundry priceless
treasures of Malines and Brussels, Honiton
and old point, or " Beggar's lace," sprigged
shawls and veils, and such marvels of fine
things, to be by her got up. All of which
proceedings are characterised by the great
millinery establishments, by the fashionable
blanchisseuses de fin and by M. Anatole, coiffeur,
of Regent Street, as atrocious, mean,
stingy, avaricious, and unjustifiable on the
part of miladi; but which, if they suit her
to order and Miss Tarlatan to undertake, are
in my mind, on the broad-gauge of free trade,
perfectly reasonable and justifiable. Some
ladies make a merit of their Tarlatanism,
stating, with pride, that their maids "do
everything for them; "  others endeavour
uneasily to defend their economy by reference
to the hardness of the times, to their large
families, to the failure of revenue from my
lord's Irish estates, to the extravagance of
such and such a son or heir, or to Sir John
having lost enormously in railways or by
electioneering. One lady I have heard of
who palliated all domestic retrenchments on
the groud of having to pay so much income-tax.
Unhappy woman!

Hairdresser, dressmaker, getter-up of fine
linen; skilled in cosmetics and perfumes;
tasteful arranger of bouquets; dexterous
cleaner of gloves (for my lady must have two
pairs of clean gloves a day, and, bountiful
as may be her pin-money, you will rarely
find her spending one thousand and thirty
times three shillings per annum in gloves);
artful trimmer of bonnets; clever linguist;
of great conversational powers in her own
language; of untiring industry, cheerfulness,
and good temper—all these is Fanny Tarlatan,
aged twenty-eight. I have a great respect
for Fanny Tarlatan, and for the lady's-maid,
generically, and wish to vindicate her from
the slur of being a gossiping, tawdry, intriguing,
venal waiting-maid, as which she is
generally represented in novels and plays, and
similar performances.

Fanny is not without personal charms. She
has ringlets that her lady might envy, and
the comely good-humoured look which eight-
and-twenty is often gilded with. She has been
resolute enough to steel her heart against the
advances of many a dashing courier, of many
an accomplished valet, of many a staid and
portly butler. She does not look for matrimony
in the World of Service. Mr. What-next,
at the Great Haberdashery Palace,
Froppery House, head man there, indeed
(though Mr. Biggs, my lord's gentleman, has
sneeringly alluded to him as a " low counter-
jumper"), has spoken her fair. Jellytin, the
rising pastrycook at Gunter's, has openly
avowed his maddening passion, and showed
her his savings' bank book. But that did
not dazzle her; for she too has a " little bit
of money of her own." Her revenues chiefly
lie, not in her wages—they are not too ample
—but in her perquisites. Lawyers would
starve (figuratively, of course, for 'tis impossible
for a lawyer to starve under any
circumstances) on the bare six and eightpences
—it is the extra costs that fatten. Perquisites
are Fanny Tarlatan's' costs. To her fall
all my lady's cast-off clothes. Their amount
and value depend upon my lady's constitutional
liberality or parsimony. A dress may
be worn once, a week, a month, or a year
before it reverts to the lady's-maid. So with
gloves, shoes, ribbons, and all the other
weapons in the female armoury, of which I
know no more than Saint Anthony did of the
sex—or that Levantine monk Mr. Curzon
made us acquainted with, who had never
seen a woman. Old Lady McAthelyre, with
whom Fanny lived before she went to the
Countess of CÅ“urdesart's (Lady McA. was
a terrible old lady, not unsuspected of a
penchant for shoplifting and drinking eau de
cologne grog), used to cut up all her old
dresses for aprons, and the fingers off her
gloves for mittens, and was the sort of old
lady altogether who might reasonably be
expected to skin a flea for the hide and tallow
thereof. Mrs. Colonel Scraw, Fanny's mistress
after Lady CÅ“urdesart, made her old
clothes her own peculiar perquisites, and sold
them herself. But such exceptions are rare,
and Fanny has had, on the whole, no great
reason to complain. Perhaps you will, therefore,
at some future time, meet with her
under the name of Whatnext, or Jellytin, or
Figgles, or Seakale, in a snug, well-to-do
West-End business, grown into a portly
matron (with ringlets yet; for they are vital,
to the lady's-maid through life) with two
little girls tripping home from Miss Weazel's
dancing academy. I hope so, with all my
heart.

There is a custom common among the
English nobility, and yet peculiar to that
privileged class, to get the best of everything.
Consequently, whenever they find foreign
cooks and foreign musicians more skilful than
native talent, it is matter of noble usance to
refect upon foreign dishes; to prefer the
performances of foreign minstrels and players;
to cover the head, or hands, or feet, with
coverings made by foreign hands; and, even
in the ordinary conversation of life, to pepper
its discourse with foreign words, as you would
a sheep's kidney with cayenne. So my lord
duke entertains in his great mansion a French
cook, a Swiss confectioner, an Italian house
steward, a French valet, German and French
governesses, a German under-nurse or bonne
(that his children may imbibe fragments of
foreign language with their pap), besides
a host of non-resident foreign artists and
professors gathered from almost every nation
under the sun. It is, therefore, but reasonable
that her grace the duchess should