lady eleanor charlotte butler.

born 1739. died 1829.

miss sarah ponsonby.

born 1755. died 1831.

MANY have been the conjectures as to why these two eccentric ladies should have left family and friends, and have lived for so many years together in perfect friendship. The world made free with their names, but they lived down all scandal, and the highest in the land were proud to call them friends. Their original idea had been to retire from the world—

and to find a solace for all worldly ills in mutual friendship. But the world would not permit them to do this. The fame of their romantic friendship spread far and wide, and the cottage at Llangollen became the scene of a succession of coteries as brilliant as those of Mrs. Garrick, and as learned as those of Mrs. Montagu. For in the Llangollen cottage the events and scandals of the great world were as well known as in the salons of London and Paris.

The following letters and details of the lives of these two ladies—which have never before been published—have been supplied by their relative and executor, C. W. Hamilton, Esq., of Hamwood, County Meath. These details include extracts from the Diary of a Mrs. Goddard, a manuscript remarkable not alone for the light which it throws upon this curious friendship, but also as being an excellent picture of the social life of the age wherein it was written.