The sort of character I wish to describe, is to be met with in every scene of second-rate society, though she is rarely, if ever, found in the circles of really mental or personal importance.

A woman of demi-ton is no less remarkable for her love of notoriety, than for the prominent figure she is ambitious of making, wherever she meets the eye of public observation. In a small circle of intimate friends, she never fails to take the lead in conversation; to inform the attentive group of her opinions on matters of fashionable, as well as of political import. 'As I always say, and it is my opinion,' are the prefatory sentences to every point of her discourse; while 'my judgement is never questioned,' or, 'my friends do me the honour to consult me on most occasions,' is the unvarying epilogue to every rhapsody of folly and self-importance.

In a carriage, a woman of demi-ton sits prominently conspicuous; at the theatre she takes the centre seat of a front row, where she annoys the actors, and disturbs the audience by her vulgar and injudicious remarks; while, at frequent intervals, she looks wishfully around for attention, or for approbation.

A woman of demi-ton, being generally a person of vulgar extraction, and no less vulgar mind, disdains to associate with those classes of people, with whom she was by nature formed to pass her days. The circles of nobility, the abodes of the enlightened, are closed against such a companion: she has therefore only to mix with men of rank, by becoming the dependant, and the flatterer of degraded beauty.

A woman of demi-ton is loud and incessant in her conversation. Her habitation is like herself, an exhibition of useless and tasteless frippery; and her drawing-room is dressed, like a parisian bontique de bijoux, with the refuse of auction-rooms, the rewards of flattery, and the trunipery of old-fashioned caprices; while her table is scantily provided, and her persimony extends even to the privation of comfort, neatness, and delicacy.

A woman of demi-ton is always treated to public places; she is particularly fond of attending those whom she makes her dupes to their morning shop-rambles, where she instructs them in purchasing bargains, at the same moment that she fastens (with Lynx-like penetration) on such articles of dress as she means to accept from her credulous companion. She visits perpetually: but at home, excepting during the forenoon, she is generally invisible. On her chimney, are files of visiting-cards, with the names of persons to whom she is totally unknown, picked up in her morning perambulations, or ingeniously written by herself, to give her a kind of domestic consequence. At a concert, or a subscription ball, she is the leading character; her grotesque finery excites notice; her loud toned voice arrests attention; and a sort of dumb astonishment, verging on contempt, is by her mistaken for the very rapture of adulation.

At a watering-place, she resides in an obscure lodging; but at a circulating library, or a raffle-shop, she is the very soul of notoriety. She there makes her sarcastic comments without sense; but so replete with sound, that her hearers wonder, while they avoid her. If a prize of chance be gained, she admires, gazes, sighs, wishes it had been hers, and sometimes, by her inuendoes, really makes it so. But she never fails to attend the public balls; but always finds an excuse to depart, before the master of the ceremonies receives the emoluments of his labours; and, to complete the journey of deceptive importance, she returns to the metropolic in a stage-coach, to tell all her acquaintances of how splendidly she has past the summer.