We find a long portrait gallery of ministers, and princes, and princesses, one more imbecile, ignorant, and corrupt than another. One minister did not know the difference between Russia and Prussia; another always wrote Asiatic for Henseatic, and thought his correction necessary. Much light is thrown on the first quarrel between Ferdinand and his father; and the narrow escape of the Duke of Infantado is well told. Godoy, like all who had the honor of Lord Holland's acquaintance, was in some degree a favorite of his, his good qualities being brought out to neutralize his many bad ones. Jovellanos and Arguelles appear the only honest characters in the midst of such a mass of vice, and even they were pedantic, impracticable, and prejudiced. No history, narrative, or memoir can be so disgusting as those of Spain and its court under the dominion of the House of Bourbon. The imagination of no novelist has ever attained that _acme_ of duplicity, cruelty, villany, and cowardice, which made up the character of Ferdinand. The general opinion of PRINCE METTERNICH, since he has become familiar to London circles, has been rather to diminish former opinion of his superior wisdom. Lord Holland's early opinion of the prince is thus recorded: "He seems hardly qualified by any superior genius to assume the ascendency in the councils of his own and neighboring nations, which common rumor has for some years attributed to him. He appeared to me, in the short intercourse I had with him, little superior to the common run of continental politicians and courtiers, and clearly inferior to the Emperor of Russia in those qualities which secure an influence in great affairs. Some who admit the degrading but too prevalent opinion that a disregard to truth is useful and necessary in the government of mankind, have on that score maintained the contrary proposition. His manners are reckoned insinuating. In my slight acquaintance with him in London I was not struck with them; they seemed such as might have been expected from a German who had studied French vivacity in the fashionable novels of the day. I saw little of a sagacious and observant statesman, or of a courtier accustomed to very refined and enlightened society."