Just twenty years did she adorn our stage; ultimately taking leave of it at Drury Lane, in April, 1797, in the character of Lady Teazle. Before that time, however, she had been prominent in the Christmas private plays at the Duke of Richmond’s, in which the Earl of Derby, Lord Henry Fitzgerald, and the Honorable Mrs. Dormer acted with her; and that rising barrister, Mr. Burroughs, looking constantly at the judicial bench as his own proper stage, was among the most admiring of the audience. It was there that was formed that attachment which ultimately made of her, a month after she had retired from the stage, Countess of Derby, and subsequently mother of a future countess, who still wears her coronet. Not long after this period, and following on her presentation at Court, where she was received with marked kindly condescension by Queen Charlotte, the countess was walking in the marriage procession of the Princess Royal and the Duke of Wurtemberg; her foot caught in the carpeting, and she would have fallen to the ground, but for the ready arms, once more extended to support her, of Mr. Burroughs, now an eminent man indeed. Many years had been added to the roll of time, when a carriage, containing a lady was on its way to Windsor. It suddenly came to a stop, by the breaking of an axle-tree. In the midst of the distress which ensued to the occupier, a second carriage approached, bearing a goodnatured-looking gentleman, who at once offered his services. The lady, recognising an old friend, accepted the offer with alacrity. As the two drove off together in the gentleman’s carriage toward Windsor, the owner of it remarked that he had almost expected to find her in distress on the road; for it was Christmas Eve, and he had been thinking of old times. “How many years is it, my lady countess,” said he, “since I stood at my father’s shop-door in Salisbury, watching your perilous passage over the market-place, with a bowl of milk?” “Not so long at all events,” she answered with a smile, “but that I recollect my poor father would have lost his breakfast, but for your assistance.” “The time is not long for memory,” replied the Judge, “nor is Salisbury as far from Windsor as Dan from Beersheba; yet how wide the distance between the breakfast at the cage-door at Salisbury, and the Christmas dinner to which we are both proceeding, in the palace of the king!” “The earl is already there,” added the countess, “and he will be happier than the king himself to welcome the legal knight who has done such willing service to the Lady of the Knight of the Bath.” To those whose power and privilege it is to create such knights, we will now direct our attention, and see how kings themselves behaved in _their_ character as knights. THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. FROM THE NORMANS TO THE STUARTS. “Un roi abstrait n’est ni père, ni fils, ni frère, ni parent, ni chevalier, ami. Qu’est il donc? _Roi_, même quand il dort.”--DIDEROT.