This eminent tragedian and delightful man, with winning voice, beautiful smile, and captivating manner, was ever most kind to me, whom he called his “wild child,” and did he not on that very night lend me his own magnificent pair of diamond shoe-buckles (the present of some great potentate) to “glitter and sparkle,” as he said, “on my little feet”? The ball was given at St James’s,[39] and caused great excitement in London, festivities of that kind having long fallen into disuse. It was a beautiful and deeply interesting scene, and, in my eyes, the most beautiful personage in the whole pageant was the Prince Consort! He had chosen the character of Edward III., wearing a surcoat richly embroidered with the arms of France and England, over a complete suit of armour, his open vizor and perfect profile surmounted by a kingly crown; he looked, indeed, as Tennyson has it, “A very perfect knight.” Footnote 39: (?) Buckingham Palace. By his side stood his faithful and loving wife, Philippa, in queenly robes, also rich in heraldic blazonry, displaying in her whole costume that adherence to historical correctness which did my dramatic heart good. The dress was rather a heavy one for our fair young Sovereign, but she bore it bravely, and her dignified and graceful dancing was the theme of universal praise. I can vividly recall many of the different characters which were assumed for that night only. How well my dear cousin, Lady Exeter,[40] looked as Queen Elizabeth of York; how Lord Cardigan, in a magnificent suit of elaborate armour, presented a very grand representation of the brave Bayard, the chevalier (who was at least, _sans peur_), and my eccentric friend, Lord Houghton, showed his poetical taste by appearing as the great Chaucer. But why enumerate a list of names, the greater part of which, alas! belong no more to the living. Footnote 40: Isabella Poyntz married to Brownlow, second Marquis of Exeter. [Sidenote: CHARLES YOUNG]