before the aristocracy, but with as little foundation for the charge
generally, I believe, as I am satisfied there was in this particular
instance.

Mr. White possessed a museum--formed chiefly by himself, and
originally, perhaps, directed simply to professional objects, such as
would have little chance for engaging the attention of females. But
surgeons and speculative physicians, beyond all other classes of
intellectual men, cultivate the most enlarged and liberal curiosity; so
that Mr. White's museum furnished attractions to an unusually large
variety of tastes. I had myself already seen it; and it struck me that
Mr. White would be gratified if Lady Carbery would herself ask to see
it; which accordingly she did; and thus at once removed the painful
feeling that he might be extorting from her an expression of interest
in his collection which she did not really feel.

Amongst the objects which gave a scientific interest to the collection,
naturally I have forgotten one and all--first, midst, and last; for
this is one of the cases in which we all felicitate ourselves upon the
art and gift of forgetting; that art which the great Athenian
[Footnote: "The great Athenian"--Themistocles.] noticed as amongst the
_desiderata_ of human life--that gift which, if in some rare cases
it belongs only to the regal prerogatives of the grave, fortunately in
many thousands of other cases is accorded by the treachery of a human
brain. Heavens! what a curse it were, if every chaos, which is stamped
upon the mind by fairs such as that London fair of St. Bartholomew in
years long past, or by the records of battles and skirmishes through
the monotonous pages of history, or by the catalogues of libraries
stretching over a dozen measured miles, could not be erased, but
arrayed itself in endless files incapable of obliteration, as often as