"Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way."

Before there was a regular demand and an established market, there were
certain hawkers and pedlars of literature, fetchers and carriers of bays,
and at every turn copies of impromptus, charades, and lines by the
honourable Miss C----, and the honourable Mrs. D----, were put into my
hands by young ladies, begging for praise, which it was seldom in my power
conscientiously to bestow. I early had a foreboding--one of my mother's
_presentiments_--that I should come to disgrace with Lady Anne Mowbray
about some of these cursed scraps of poetry. Her ladyship had one--shall I
say?--_peculiarity_. She could not bear that any one should differ from her
in matters of taste; and though she regularly disclaimed being a reading
lady, she was most assured of what she was most ignorant. With the
assistance of Fowler's flattery, together with that of all the hangers-on
at Brantefield Priory, her temper had been rendered incapable of bearing
contradiction. But this defect was not immediately apparent: on the
contrary, Lady Anne was generally thought a pleasant, good-humoured
creature, and most people wondered that the daughter could be so different
from the mother. Lady de Brantefield was universally known to be positive
and prejudiced. Her prejudices were all old-fashioned, and ran directly
counter to the habits of her acquaintance. Lady Anne's, on the contrary,
were all in favour of the present fashion, whatever it might be, and ran
smoothly with the popular stream. The violence of her temper could,
therefore, scarcely be suspected, till something opposed the current: a
small obstacle would then do the business--would raise the stream suddenly
to a surprising height, and would produce a tremendous noise. It was my ill
fortune one unlucky day to cross Lady Anne Mowbray's humour, and to oppose
her opinion. It was about a trifle; but trifles, indeed, made, with her,
the sum of human things. She came one morning, as it was her custom, to