BY THE SAME AUTHOR Cloth , 6s. A DAZZLING REPROBATE. A GIRL OF THE MULTITUDE. THE SITUATIONS OF LADY PATRICIA. Paper Cover , 1s. ; Crown , 2s. THE LETTERS OF HER MOTHER TO ELIZABETH. THE GRANDMOTHER'S ADVICE TO ELIZABETH. LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN WITH THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS MCMVI [ All rights reserved. ] TO ETHEL and HERBERT NICOL...

I F we may believe so eminent an authority as M. Emile Bourgeois, whose "Le Grand Siècle," is a fascinating proof of his statement, "the age we live in delights in inquiry into the private lives of the great and into the spirit of society of the past. It loves to interrogate them directly, so that it may get at the secrets of their passions and find out their state of mind at different periods. This curiosity is not culpable. 'It almost ceases to be curiosity,' said Voltaire, 'when it has epochs

I T was the dream of Richelieu, as everybody knows, to make the French monarchy independent and absolute. This dream was only half realised when the Cardinal died, but as he was too astute not to foresee that after his death there would be a violent reaction against his policy, he had sought a successor who would be capable of finishing what he was obliged to leave undone. He found the man he wanted in an obscure Italian, who proved in the end to be even more subtle and slippery than his Eminenc

T HE difference between Hortense Mancini and Barbara Villiers is the difference between the refinement and the grossness of vice. If we had met them in fiction we should have said that the former might have been created by Balzac and the latter by Zola. The history of Barbara Villiers is like a study of the progress of vice. At the first glance it would seem that such a statement was calculated to cause the respectable reader to skip the following biographical account of this British Imperia. Bu

L A BELLE STUART! The glamour of the Restoration is in that romantic name. At the sound of it our thoughts at once rush back to childhood, when we learnt English History out of story-books and picture-books; and old, half-forgotten tales of the Merry Monarch, and the gay doings of cavaliers with periwigs and swords, of maids of honour all lace and perfume, crowd upon the memory. La Belle Stuart! To the very children of the Board Schools—if Imagination be a faculty looked upon with favour at thos

T HE masterpiece of Sir Peter Lely, which forms the frontispiece to this book, scarcely needs the charming testimony of Anthony Hamilton to assure us that the fair subject of this historiette was a good woman. The portrait breathes goodness and refinement. The Court of Charles II. had no ornament so flawless. La Belle Hamilton was as chaste as Lady Castlemaine was polluted, as pure as La Belle Stuart was designing. If the "Mémoires de Gramont" has kept the recollection of the Restoration more vi

I F the fairies, as is believed in fairyland, come to christenings, we have a fancy that five were present at Frances Jennings's, and that each in turn addressed her thus in fairy fashion, as they clustered round her with their gifts:— "I bring thee Coquetry, it shall gain thee hearts." "I bring thee Malice, it shall gain thee enemies." "I bring thee Virtue, it shall gain thee respect." "I bring thee Ambition, it shall gain thee power." "And I," frowned the Wicked Fairy—it is de rigueur that the

I N all ages there are persons of whom it may be said that they have been born out of their proper era. The manner in which such beings are received by the times in which they find themselves depends entirely on the standard of public opinion then existing. The Countess of Shrewsbury was one of these strange individuals. She should have flourished in France under the Valois and the great Dumas should have been her historian. In times like our own, for instance—for whether in or out of her proper

A S she was French in all but her birth, the favourite sister of Charles II. can only be said to belong to the Court of the Restoration by courtesy. Nevertheless, on the occasion of her two short visits to England during her brother's reign the impression she created was so lasting, so sympathetic, that posterity, like her own generation, has agreed that of all the women who graced Whitehall the most fascinating was Madame. She was born in the thick of the Civil War at Exeter, whither her mother

I F proof were required of anything so obvious as the cynicism of fame, one might cite the subject of this memoir as an example. Of European importance in her own day, and now—excepting Nell Gwynn—unquestionably the best remembered because the most odious of all the women of the Restoration, although "Madam Carwell," as the English people called her, has escaped oblivion, the mere spelling of her name has become a matter of indifference to history. Kéroual, Kéroualle, Querouralles, Querouailles