_Duchess of Devonshire_ and the _Viscountess Duncannon_ by Bartolozzi, _Lady Elizabeth Foster_ by Caroline Watson, _Miss Farren_ (Countess of Derby) by Collyer, and _Frances Kemble_ by John Jones. The social reign of the Court beauties lasted over a long period, and survived many changes of fashion, from the macaroni absurdities and monstrous headdresses to the simple muslin gown and the straw “picture” hat. The days of “those goddesses the Gunnings” seemed to have come again when the three rival Duchesses, Devonshire, Rutland, and Gordon, were the autocrats of “the _ton_,” ruling the modish world not only with the sovereignty of their beauty, elegance, wit and charm, but with the fascinating audacity of their innovations and the outvieing heights of their feathers. “Come, Paris, leave your hills and dells, You’ll scorn your dowdy goddesses, If you once see our English belles, For all their gowns and boddices. Here’s Juno Devon all sublime; Minerva Gordon’s wit and eyes; Sweet Rutland, Venus in her prime; You’ll die before you give the prize.” So sang the enthusiastic poet; though the “satirical rogues” who wrote squibs and drew caricatures were not quite so kind, and a writer in the “Morning Post,” with a whimsical turn for statistics, actually drew up a “Scale of Bon Ton,” showing, in a round dozen of the leading beauties of the day the relative proportions in which they possessed beauty, figure, elegance, wit, sense, grace, expression, sensibility, and principles. It is an amusing list, in which we find the lovely Mrs. Crewe, for instance, credited with almost the maximum for beauty, but no grace at all; the Countess of Jersey with plenty of beauty, grace and expression, but neither sense nor principles; the Duchess of Devonshire with more principles than beauty, and more figure than either; her Grace of Gordon with her elegance at zero, and the Countess of Barrymore supreme in all the feminine attractions.