her success in the part had been the cap. The milliner who had made it,
and whose fortune it had made, had retired from business, grown old;
luckily, however, she was not dead: she was hunted up and adjured to
reproduce, if possible, this marvel of her art, and came to her former
patroness, bringing with her the identical head-gear. Clairon seized
upon it: "Ah oui, c'est bien cela! c'est bien là le bonnet!" It was on
her head in an instant, and she before the glass, in vain trying to
reproduce with it the well-remembered effect. She pished and pshawed,
frowned and shrugged, pulled the pretty _chiffon_ this way and that on
her forehead; and while so doing, coming nearer and nearer to the
terrible looking-glass, suddenly stopped, looked at herself for a moment
in silence, and then, covering her aged and faded face with her hands,
exclaimed, "Ah, c'est bien le bonnet! mais ce n'est plus la figure!"

Our next home, after Newman Street, was at a place called Westbourne
Green, now absorbed into endless avenues of "palatial" residences, which
scoff with regular-featured, lofty scorn at the rural simplicity implied
by such a name. The site of our dwelling was not far from the Paddington
Canal, and was then so far out of town that our nearest neighbors,
people of the name of Cockrell, were the owners of a charming residence,
in the middle of park-like grounds, of which I still have a faint,
pleasurable remembrance. The young ladies, daughters of Mr. Cockrell,
really made the first distinct mark I can detect on the _tabula rasa_ of
my memory, by giving me a charming pasteboard figure of a little girl,
to whose serene and sweetly smiling countenance, and pretty person, a
whole bookful of painted pasteboard petticoats, cloaks, and bonnets
could be adapted; it was a lovely being, and stood artlessly by a stile,
an image of rustic beauty and simplicity. I still bless the Miss
Cockrells, if they are alive, but if not, their memory for it!