THE ILLUSTRIOUS SUBJECT of the following Memoir, is first presented to our attention in the interesting position of a youthful belle at the Court of the stately representative of British power and rule, within the limits of the proud, aristocratical and wealthy "Old Dominion."

The charms of an agreeable person and a lovely face, enhanced by the superior fascination of winning manners and an amiable disposition

combined to render this fair representative of an ancient race, one of the most admired and beloved of the many living flowers assembled during the season of fashion, to grace the Colonial Court of Governor Dinwiddie.

MARTHA DANDRIDGE was born in the County of New Kent, in the Colony of Virginia, in May, 1732. The long line of ancestors from whom she was descended, was originally represented in the Colony by the Rev. Orlando Jones, a Welsh gentleman, who early established himself on the banks of the Potomac.

Miss Dandridge possessed only such artificial accomplishments as the system of domestic instruction, then the sole means of female education in her native land, enabled her to acquire. But she was, happily, endowed by nature, with infinitely more essential qualifications for usefulness and happiness than these could supply-selfrespect, good sense, gentleness of temper, a quick perception of propriety, and a ready power of self-adaptation to the exigencies and necessities of practical life.

Though the celebrity early acquired, and the distinguished associations as early commenced by Miss Dandridge, were perpetuated through the

accumulated years of a long and varied life, her career in the dazzling realms of fashion, was destined to be as evanescent as it was brilliant and agreeable.

Won by the almost resistless power of a deep and discriminating attachment,-that most exquisitely delicate and expressive of compliments,— at the age of seventeen, before adulation and her unusual succès de société had alloyed the ingenuous simplicity, or diminished the buoyant enthusiasm of her noble nature,

in the lustre of her youth, she gave Her hand, with her heart in it, to❞—

one of her numerous admirers, Colonel Daniel Parke Custis, a son of the Hon. John Custis of Arlington.

Through her eventful life, it was the happy fate of this distinguished lady to be the object of warm and disinterested affection; and this characteristic of her history was eminently illustrated by the attachment of Col. Custis, who, in opposition to the more ambitious matrimonial designs of his father, himself a King's Counsellor, and desirous of public honors for his son,-preferred the young and lovely MISS DANDRIDGE to all the

allurements of political distinction and unbounded wealth.

The consent of the reluctant and ambitious King's Counsellor yielded, at last, to the firmness and ardor of manly constancy, the successful lover triumphantly bore away his fair prize, to his plantation in her native County of Kent.

The residence of Col. Custis was situated on the shore of the Pamunkey River, and was known by the now peculiarly significant appellation of the "White House."

He was a highly prosperous planter, and a pleasing impersonation of the Virginia gentleman of the olden time. Possessed of sterling integrity, and eminently gifted with the refined and elevated sentiments so agreeably illustrated by the peculiar incidents connected with his matrimonial engagement, he was, also, endowed by nature with a heart as generously liberal as his purse was ample and overflowing. Living in times when hospitality was not only practised as a duty and a virtue, but regarded as affording some of the most innocent and delightful gratifications of domestic life, his bountiful board was habitually spread, like those of the feudal lords of other days and other lands, not alone for numerous vassals and