VI. HONOURABLE MRS. NORTON (LADY 1808-1877. Birth-The Dandies' Rout-The Three Graces-At a Ball at Almack'sSings duets with Moore-Marriage to Hon. George Norton-A bunch of beautiful creatures-Editor and contributor to Annuals-Her three sons-The Undying One-Unhappy married life-Separation from Mr. Norton-The Dream-Stuart of Dunleath-The Lady of La Garaye-Lost and Saved-Old Sir Douglas-At Lansdowne HouseSecond marriage with Sir W. Stirling-Maxwell-Death. FE EW women writers have had such a stormy and eventful life as Mrs. Norton, afterwards Lady StirlingMaxwell. We call her by the more familiar name of Mrs. Norton, as that was the one by which she was best known to the reading public. Possessed of talent, wit, beauty, grace, it seemed-to use the simile of the well-known nursery tale—as if all the good fairies had presided at her baptism; but some spiteful one must unfortunately have been left out, who made the good gifts of the others of no avail. In spite of them all, Caroline Norton's life was clouded with sadness and gloom. Married to a man utterly unworthy of her, she had to contend with the unspeakable misery of an ill-assorted union; then came a time of torture in which her soul was wrung to its very centre, and then forty years of secret struggles and bitter loneliness of spirit. After this came a brief space of peace and calm, but the long troublous day was fast ringing to evensong; the once fascinating Caroline Norton was not Lady Stirling-Maxwell for more than three short months, and the close of her life resembled the bright but fleeting sunshine of a November afternoon, which is gone almost as we gaze upon it. Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Sheridan was born in 1808, and was brought up very quietly at Hampton Court by her mother, the widow of "Tom" Sheridan sometimes known as Dazzle. Mrs. Sheridan was daughter of Colonel and Lady Elizabeth Callander, of Craigforth and Ardkinlas, and had dabbled in authorship herself. The Critic of July 1, 1851, gives the names of two of her novels, Carwell and Aims and Ends. They were reviewed in the Quarterly Review for 1832, and are written with ease and grace. Both of them were published anonymously. If little Caroline imbibed some of her literary tastes from her Scotch mother, she inherited a spark of genius from her grandfather, the never-to-be-forgotten Richard Brinsley Sheridan, whom in person she much resembled. The career of the erratic young Irishman, whose speech on the impeachment of Warren Hastings is one of the finest pieces of oratory on record, flits across the annals of the eighteenth century like a flash of lightning. Under-Secretary of State, Secretary to the Treasury, favourite of the Prince Regent, manager of the Drury Lane Theatre, author of two of the wittiest comedies ever written,-The School for Scandal and The Rivals, both of which keep the stage to the present day, Richard Brinsley Sheridan was always full of resources, never-failing in repartee, and continually in debt. His smile was so bewitching, his face so expressive, his eyes so brilliant, his manner so captivating, that even his creditors were sometimes silenced and disarmed. But at last the harp was jangled and out of tune; this friend of an unworthy prince would even have been arrested by the sheriff's officers on his death-bed and carried off to prison in THE THREE GRACES. 123 the blankets, if the doctors had not declared that he would certainly die on the way. Then came a magnificent funeral and a grave in Westminster Abbey. The knowledge that the blood of such an extraordinary genius flowed in her veins had, no doubt, an immense influence on little Caroline's mind. When she was only thirteen, her friends were astonished at the comic talent of The Dandies' Rout, a jeu d'esprit which she and her sister wrote in ridicule of the foppery of the day, and which was illustrated from her own designs. Some years afterwards she brought out The Sorrows of Rosalie, highly praised by Professor Wilson in the Noctes Ambrosianæ. The young authoress could not, indeed, complain of want of appreciation, for everything she wrote was hailed as a prodigy of talent. As a child, she showed few traces of the beauty for which she was afterwards so celebrated, and her lovely mother had many misgivings as to the future comeliness of one of the most celebrated belles of her day. Caroline's personal charms developed as she grew older. The fatal gift of beauty came to her by inheritance from her grandmother, the lovely Miss Linley, of Bath, and from her handsome father and mother. The three Miss Sheridans were often compared to the Three Graces. The eldest, Helen Selina, was married, in 1825, to Captain Blackwood, afterwards Lord Dufferin, and mother of the Marquis of Dufferin. She would have been considered a beauty in every other family, but she was the least beautiful of the three; she, too, had a gift of song, and her ballads, Katey's Letter, The Bay of Dublin, and The Irish Emigrant, have a simple näiveté and sly humour all their own. Next came Caroline, whose dark Southern eyes and queen-like grace and dignity marked her out wherever she went. The youngest, Jane Georgina, afterwards Duchess of Somerset, and Queen of Beauty at the Eglinton Tournament, was fairest of the fair; but she was probably in the schoolroom when her second sister made her entrée into fashionable life. At that time everybody who was anybody was sure to go to the balls at Almack's. Moore the poet went, and in his gossiping Diary, dated May 17, 1826, we read how he saw the fancy quadrille "Les Paysannes Provinciales " danced. "Some pretty girls among them," he adds, approvingly "a daughter of Lord Talbot's, the Misses Duncombe, &c., Mrs. Sheridan's second daughter, strikingly like old Brinsley, and yet very pretty." A few days later he puts down-" Called at Mrs. Sheridan's, the sky pouring torrents all day. Sung for and with Miss Sheridan, who looked quite as pretty as at night; promised I would go and see the quadrille of 'The Months' at Almack's on Wednesday, she being the August of the party." Then on the 31st of May-"Went to Almack's too early, waited till the Seasons arrived, got into their wake as they passed up the room, and saw them dance their quadrille-the twelve without any gentlemen. Rather disappointed in the effect, their headdress (gold baskets full of flowers and fruit) too heavy. Miss Sheridan, the handsomest of any, most of the others pretty." But the fancy quadrilles at Almack's, and the duets with the gay little poet, were soon to be exchanged for the graver realities of life. When Caroline Sheridan was about sixteen, she attracted the notice of the Honourable George Chapple Norton, brother of Lord Grantley. He proposed for her to her mother, who refused him on account of her daughter's extreme youth; in three years he proposed again, and at the age of nineteen (July 30, 1827) Caroline Sheridan became the Honourable Mrs. Norton. In the meantime, we are informed, she "had become acquainted with and deeply attached to a gentleman whose early death alone prevented their union." Her destiny had ordained that her married life should be unfortunate. She says herself that she had not exchanged half a dozen serious sentences with her future husband before their marriage, and she soon found him to be selfish and indolent, with |