222 THE HUNTING FIELD 



or rather perhaps all owing to his being in Madame Tussaud's 

 exhibition, that Miss Crustyface gave herself any trouble about 

 him. 



Talking of the Countess Ferrers — or, alas ! for true enter- 

 prising talent ! Miss Smith — talking of Miss Smith — what a 

 loss was there for want of a little real London information and 

 experience. We will be bound to say, if Miss Smith had had 

 but a tithe of the opportunities our cousin, Miss Crustyface, 

 enjoys, she would have triumphed over the earl — at all events 

 have made costs — heavy, vindictive costs, compensate for the 

 loss of the coronet. Inspired young lady ! If the unblushing 

 " white rose " of the country — if the untrained, untutored mind 

 of rural life could depict scenes and situations that outwitted 

 her Majesty's great "cute" Solicitor-General, what might w-e 

 not have hoped from the resources of an ampler field ? It was 

 not her fault that Lord Clive was painted the very reverse of 

 what he is. It was not her fault that gentlemen were stationed 

 at Brighton who were quartered in Scotland, or that Lord 

 Brougham was made to dine with those with whom he was not 

 acquainted — it was the fault of circumstances — the want of 

 opportunity of knowing better. But, take it for all and all, the 

 performance was a wonderful — a miraculous one. 



Talk of our novelists — our Bulwers, our Blessingtons, our 

 Dickenses, our Jameses, our Hooks, or our Hoods — how they 

 sink into nothingness, how they must hide their diminished 

 heads before the maiden efforts of that unadulterated, unso- 

 phisticated country girl. Their writings are the produce of 

 active and experienced lives, their ministerings are to minds 

 predisposed to fiction (which yet they sometimes fail to move), 

 but here was pure, innocent inexperience, storming the great 

 citadel of reason, of Plutus, and of power, capturing legal 

 acuteness, and all but carrying judge and jury in her train. 

 Such efforts were worthy of a better end. 



" Facts are stranger than fiction," says the proverb, and 



