Very little further information is forthcoming as to the doings of the Mozarts in London, the father's letters thence, with the solitary exception given above, having never reached the Mozarteum, though there are many dated from other cities. But we know that they gave three very successful public concerts, and also that, on one occasion, when Leopold Mozart was unwell, his little son first began to write orchestral symphonies, which his sister had to copy out for him. They finally left England at the end of July 1765, and their fortunes thenceforward have been amply recorded by Jahn, and other writers. The mother died fifteen years afterwards at Paris, whither she had gone with her son, to make a home for him during his contemplated long stay in that city. It is to her death that we owe some of Wolfgang's most touching letters, which abundantly prove, as do, indeed, all his letters to his father and sister, that the goodness and tenderness of the man were not by any means lost in the genius of the musician. The simple-minded Kapellmeister himself lived to see his son acknowledged, if in some quarters somewhat ungraciously, to be the king of living composers, and died, four years before him, at Salzburg.

'Nannerl' married Baron v. Son

nenburg, and settled at St. Gilgen, about twenty miles from her old home. Becoming a widow in 1801, she returned to Salzburg and gave music-lessons till her death, in 1829. Although, for some years previously, she was afflicted with blindness, her services as a teacher of music were none the less eagerly sought, and her bright kindly nature is not yet forgotten.

And Wolfgang-who does not know his fate? How he had to fight his way through innumerable petty jealousies and vexations; how, though his genius was universally recognised, his life from first to last was a struggle for bread, how he died at Vienna in 1791, when barely yet

'Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita;' how there was scarcely one, not even the wife he loved so well, to follow him to the grave; and how, finally, he was buried as a pauper, and his resting-place, save that it is somewhere in a large Vienna Friedhof, is as unknown to us as that of Moses. In his life he served as a model of many of the fairest of human virtues, and in his too-early death he added another to the many existing illustrations of the truth of the proverb:

'Fructus idem diuturnus ac præcox esse nequit.'

A. G.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A WONDERFUL WOMAN.

AMONGST the first callers at Holyrood House was a certain Miss Banks-the very first caller indeed; for it was a specialty of that lady to assist at the social birth and social death of all the many rich and delightful friends she made and dropped. She had known the Seatons, and she had gone to the house the very moment she heard of Mr. Seaton's departure with the intention of offering her sympathy to Mrs. Seaton, only that lady refused to see any one. She had penetrated from basement to attic when the valuable and fashionable,' &c., were on view. She had attended the auction jotted down the prices the things fetched; and she had since accompanied several persons with 'orders to view' who thought or who did not think the desirable mansion might suit them as a residence.

and

Surely there never was a woman with so large an acquaintance. She knew everybody and everybody knew her. She made friends with the Joneses by telling them she had heard so much of them from the Robinsons, and she procured the entrée to the Smiths by exactly the same means.

In her style of conversation she adopted towards great persons, or persons who wished to be considered great, a tone of humility which met with much approval.

'It does not matter upon whom I call,' she would often say. 'I am so insignificant a body, it is of no consequence what I do.'

And it was for this reason, perhaps, that Miss Banks constantly seemed throwing herself up in the air to determine which way the wind blew. She decided the social positions of more new-comers to the old suburb than could well be imagined.

'Delightful family, Miss Banks

says.'

Charming woman, Miss Banks tells me.'

'Quite an acquisition to the neighbourhood, Miss Banks declares.'

'Not at all nice people, Miss Banks fears.'

'Something odd about them, Miss Banks thinks.'

'Miss Banks advises caution about visiting them.'

As to who Miss Banks herself was, very few people sifted that mystery to the bottom. Simply as Miss Banks-such a wonderful woman, such a manager, such a useful person, such a reliable creature, such a martyr, such a gleam of sunshine, such a cheerful help in time of trouble-she was known to an enormous number of people resident in Kensington and various other parts of London. She was acquainted with many extraordinary folk, who might have seemed to be, and who indeed were, quite out of her own set; but she found them useful in some way, the reader may be quite sure of that, or Miss Banks would have dropped them, as she was in the habit of dropping those who could not, she found, in any way advance her interests. Only in a great city could such a woman as

Miss Banks have grown to full perfection. she must soon have exhausted the list of persons willing to be deceived, and forced even by the instinct of self-preservation to cultivate some human sentiment in her friendships.

In any small town

Ladies were almost unanimous in Miss Banks' praise. Some men evidently had their doubts upon the subject; but then, as their wives said,' Poor Miss Banks is neither young nor pretty.' Young she certainly was not, and she had never been pretty; but though reasons such as these might have induced great admiration in the feminine mind, they had not much to do with a certain hesitation masculine lips seemed to feel in sounding her praises.

On the whole, perhaps, they had a little too much of Miss Banks; the best song is apt to pall if sung too often, and the lady seemed to pervade her friends' firesides.

She resided with her brother-inlaw in a freehold tenement which belonged to that gentleman, and was squeezed in amongst better houses, as a shabby man sometimes gets squeezed in amongst a crowd of well-dressed people. The brother was generally spoken of by Miss Banks' admirers as 'terribly afflicted,' as a 'sad trial,' as a 'poor useless creature,' as an awful burden,' as a 'fearful charge;' and every one who spoke on the subject-and a great many did speak about it every day said Miss Banks' conduct was beautiful,' that her devotion was beyond praise.'

Now the facts were, first, that the house belonged to the poor ' useless creature ;' second, that he had a comfortable pension coming in, which helped to keep things going; third, that Miss Banks had not a halfpenny in the world of her own nothing except what she could in a ladylike way gain by

the exercise of her wits; and fourth, that she did not attend to the sick man at all. There was a man, a soldier, who had been servant to Mr. Gayford's father when that gentleman was in the army; and this servant now waited upon the invalid, and acted besides as, to quote Miss Banks' own phrase, male parlour-maid' in the tiny household. This man was nurse, companion, secretary to the

6

fearful charge.' He accompanied him when he went out in his bathchair; he read the newspaper aloud each morning; he brought him up his meals; he tucked him into bed; and he slept in the same room on a mattress laid generally on the floor, so that he might be close at hand if wanted.

'I always feel easy when I leave him with Niel,' Miss Banks was in the habit of remarking to her friends; and if this were so she could never have felt otherwise than easy, since Mr. Limerton was always left with Niel, and with no other person.

For the rest, when, immediately after her sister's death, Mr. Gayford was attacked by the disease which ultimately reduced him to the state of a living nonentity, Miss Banks had, with her usual 'admirable sense,' put the case before him in the clearest man

So said, so done; the will made, signed, witnessed, locked up with other papers in a box at the office of Mr. Gayford's solicitors, Miss Banks continued to live in the house where she had resided for many years, and which, for all she ever told the world about the matter, might have been her own.

Never had a lady better cause for trying to keep a relative alive, and therefore the invalid was well cared for, well nourished, well doctored, well looked after. If he had been poor he might have been taken to the nearest hospital or the workhouse, or his grave, for all Miss Banks' protestations of interest and affection; but as matters stood she knew too well on which side her bread was buttered to run any risks about dropping it, and accordingly Mr. Gayford had his two rooms set apart on the ground floor; Niel, who received a good salary to wait upon him; a clever cook, who had her orders to be most particular in the treatment of such delicacies as the invalid fancied; a doctor, who came to see him as regularly as if he had been old Lady Griffin in Kensingtonsquare, who was always fancying herself dying, but who really promised to outlive all her expectant heirs.

And further he had Miss Banks, who ran in and out, and told him the gossip of the neighbourhood and saw other people did their duty by him, keeping a watchful eye even upon the proceedings of the priceless Niel.

The doctor praised her 'devotion; the clergyman could not sufficiently extol her 'self-denial ;' the world-her world-professed itself unable to speak in terms sufficiently high of her 'courage and constancy.'

People said they could not imagine how she got through all she did; and it really was wonderful;

for, with an eye always open to the main chance, Miss Banks had seen long ago it would be profitable to allow friends to come and stay in the house occasionally; and consequently as a rule some person was stopping there-some bird of passage, who, just alighting to rest in Kensington, went on pleased and refreshed, entertaining a higher opinion than ever of that wonderful woman.'

Her connection was inexhaustible; her relations, according to her own account, as the sand on the seashore.' Officers from China, languid ladies just returned from India, poor dear Selina on her way to the south of France, Jessie packed off from home all in a hurry on account of her terrible infatuation for the handsome organist,-the little house at Kensington was big enough to receive them all, and Miss Banks willing to receive the acknowledgment,' sometimes large, sometimes but moderate, which was always offered and always accepted.

'If I were better off or had only myself, you know, dear, I wouldn't take a penny,' Miss Banks was wont to declare, with an air of proud humility that in itself was quite touching.

'Poor darling, we know how you are placed,' would be the sympathetic answer if the relative chanced to be a lady. I am sure we often say, we cannot think how you continue to keep up and look so cheerful as you do ;' while men would reply in fewer words perhaps, but with some additional gift pressed upon the sorely-tried spinster.

It was this lady who chanced to be what the Scotch call the 'first foot' across the threshold of Holyrood House when once the Moffats were fairly domiciled in Palace Gardens.

The butler, in an interval of

elegant leisure, thinking he would draw the dining-room blinds up a little higher, happened to be engaged in that not demeaning occupation when he beheld a carriage and pair stop at the gate; out of which, before the footman could get down, popped an active middle-sized lady wearing short petticoats, and making in her descent an unaffected display of trim boots and trim ankles. The

carriage drove on, and the lady came up the drive. Very plainly dressed, possessed of no imposing presence, if it had not been for the carriage Sir John's butler might have hesitated ere confessing that Lady Moffat was at home; but taking that vision of respectability into consideration, he admitted the fact of her ladyship's being within, adding, however, as a saving clause, he thought she was engaged.

Miss Banks had gone through SO many ordeals of a similar nature that, seated in the library, where he carefully shut her in, she felt she could await the result with equanimity. Lady Moffat would see her, she felt sure, and she was right.

'Will you walk this way, please?' said that nice superior butler,' as she spoke of him afterwards. 'Her ladyship is in the boudoir.'

It would not be too much to say that when Miss Banks entered that apartment her eyes absolutely winked with the glare, and her teeth chattered in her head as though she had come down suddenly upon a glacier.

It was a cold, cheerless, icy afternoon in February, and a bright fire burnt in the grate; but not all the fires that ever were kindled-so Miss Banks declared to Mrs. Cresson in Edward-square -could have made her ladyship's boudoir look warm.

A chilly-looking carpet, chilly

VOL. XXXVII. NO. CCXXII.

looking curtains, armchairs upholstered in the lightest of cretonnes, a white fur hearthrug, mirrors everywhere, starved plants in great china vases, not a picture on the walls, not a book out of place on the tables, no litter of music on the piano, no work of any sort to be seen; even before the door was closed behind her Miss Banks had mastered these details, and stood surprised at the appearance of the lady she had

come to see.

A woman not in the very faintest degree resembling any one Miss Banks had ever seen before in all her life, and yet vaguely reminding her of something or some one curiously familiar; a woman utterly distinct from every variety of the newly rich she had previously seen; a woman possessed of imperial beauty; in middle age more striking looking, more remarkable in appearance, more to be remembered with every acces sory of wealth and well-being and assured station about her than had been the case when the man, whose life since he first saw her had been a long sorrow, beheld her in the morning twilight, standing in the little garden before the poor mean house that stood, and for aught he knew still stood, in the road leading due east out of London.

'Delighted to find you have come down into our neighbourhood, Lady Moffat,' began Miss Banks, when, the first civilities. having been exchanged, she found herself seated before an immense fire, with leisure and liberty to lay her first parallels. You have never heard of me, I daresay; but I have heard so much of you from our mutual friends the Morlings.'

'I do not know very much of them,' said her ladyship, pleased nevertheless; for the Morlings

M M