trials. She was known to Dean Swift; corresponded
with him; and, the letter which
Swift wrote upon her death is one of the most
atfecting passages in all his works. They quarrelled,
it appears- not seriously, however-
and Swift on the renewal of their acquaintance,
made a formal treaty between them. It was
drawn up by Mrs. Vanhomrigh, the mother of
Vanessa, and its preservation is due to the industry
of Carll, who printed it in seventeen
hundred and eighteen in a scandalous and,
happily, rare volume of miscellanies. In this
treaty, her claim is admitted to certain privileges
and exceptions as "a lady of the
toast," and to giving herself the reputation of
being one of the Dean's acquaintances.

When this treaty was made, Miss Long
lived in Albemarle Street. She was soon however
to break up house, and fly for debt from
London to Lynn, in Norfolk. "Bailiffs were
in her house," writes Swift to Stella; "and
she retired to private lodgings; thence to the
country, nobody knows where: her friends
leave letters at some inn, and they are carried
to her; and she writes answers without
dating them from any place. I swear it grieves
me to the soul." The letter has not been preserved,
but Swift heard from her in reply.
"I had a letter to-day from poor Mrs. Long,"
he writes to Stella, "giving me an account of
her life; obscure in a remote country town,
and how easy she is under it. Poor creature!"
A second letter, he says, has quite turned his
stomach against her; " no less than two nasty
jests in it, with dashes to suppose them. She is
corrupted in that country town with vile conversation."
Sir Walter Scott is mistaken in
thinking that the letter is in print. It has
luckily not been preserved. But her last
letter to Swift, with Swift's endorsement-
"Poor Mrs. Long's last letter, written five
weeks before she died,"- was found among
the Dean's papers. She was then (November,
seventeen hundred and eleven) living near
Saint Nicholas's church at Lynn as Mrs.
Smyth. "I pretend to no more," she says,
"than being of George Smyth's family, of
Nitly, but do not talk much for fear of betraying
myself. At first they thought I
came hither to make my fortune by catching
up some of their young fellows; but having
avoided that sort of company, I am still a
riddle they know not what to make of ... I am
grown a good housewife; I can pot and pickle,
sir, and can handle a needle very prettily."

The Lady of the Toast and Treaty was not
long for this world. "Poor Mrs. Long," Swift
writes to Stella, "died at Lynn, in Norfolk, on
Saturday last, at four in the morning. She
was sick but four hours. We suppose it was
the asthma, which she was subject to as well
as the dropsy. I never was more afflicted at
any death. In her last letter she told me she
hoped to be easy by Christmas; and she
kept her word, although she meant it otherwise.
She had all sorts of amiable qualities,
and no ill ones but the indiscretion of too
much neglecting her own affairs. She had
two thousand pounds left her by an old
grandmother, with which she intended to
pay her debts, and live on an annuity she
had of a hundred a year, and Newburg
House, which would be about sixty pounds
more. That odious grandmother lived so
long, forced her to retire,- for the two thousand
pounds was settled on her after the old
woman's death; yet her brute of a brother,
Sir James Long, would not advance it for
her, else she might have paid her debts and
continued here and lived still. I believe
melancholy helped her on to her grave. I
have ordered a paragraph to be put in the
Post-Boy, giving an account of her death,
and making honourable mention of her, which
is all I can do to serve her memory. One
reason was spite; for her brother would fain
have her death a secret, to save the charge of
bringing her up here to bury her, or going
into mourning. Pardon all this for the sake of
a poor creature I had so much friendship for."

We have looked in vain for the paragraph in
the Post-Boy; but there are other and finer
proofs of the affectionate interest which Swift
took in the unhappy fate of this once celebrated
Toast. He wrote a manly and touching
letter to Lynn about her; gave full praise
to her many excellencies, and requested that
she might be buried in some part of the
church of St. Nicholas, near a wall, where a
plain marble stone could be fixed "as a poor
monument for one who deserved so well, and
which, if God sends me life, I hope one day
to place there, if no other of her friends will
think fit to do it." Her name survives
through Swift; not by the verses which the
Marquis of Wharton inscribed round one
of the toasting-glasses of the Kit-Kat Club;-

Fill the glass; let the hautboys sound,
Whilst bright Longy's health goes round:
With eternal beauty blest,
Ever blooming, still the best;
Drink your glass, and think the rest.

NORTH AND SOUTH
By the AUTHOR OF MARY BARTON
Will be completed in the next Number (no. 253).

On the Third of February will be published,
price 5s. 6d. cloth boards,
THE TENTH VOLUME
OF
HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
Containing, from No. 230 to No. 253 (both inclusive), and
the Extra Christmas Number entitled THE SEVEN
POOR TRAVELLERS.
At the same time will be published, for greater convenience,
and cheapness of binding,
THE FIRST TEN VOLUMES
OF
HOUSEHOLD WORDS
IN FIVE HANDSOME VOLUMES
WITH A GENERAL INDEX TO THE WHOLE.
Price of the Set, thus bound in FIve DOuble instead of Ten
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