Such was the nobleman who took by the hand a poor youth, whose present integrity and innocence might, he perhaps believed, vanquish the degrading influence of Somerset and his wife, to whose fame report already attached the darkest rumours. In the patron who was moved to second by his well-earned influence the fortunes of an obscure country youth, Villiers was thus no less fortunate than in the favour of Lucy Harrington. Happy had it been for him had he modelled his own conduct and rectified his notions by the standards now placed before his view; for there was nothing in the bearing of Pembroke to lower the dignity of virtue. That nobleman had been termed “the very picture and _viva effigies_ of nobility.”[55] In person, majestic, in his manners, full of stately gravity, which characterised him, whether in repose or when animated, his easy wit, free from every taint of malice, his habitual, unconscious good-breeding, might have assisted that young and unformed mind in the formation of good taste, a property which rarely flourishes without the aid of refined associates. Some defects there were, and those of a vital nature, which, in looking closely into any character of that time, cannot but be discovered. These were materially owing to the bartering marriages of the middle and early modern times—the selling one’s dearest hopes and interests in this life for an estate, or an honour, or a reversion. The standard of morality was, of course, lowered, as it still is in France, by the excuse that fidelity to a wife could hardly be expected under the circumstances of enforced unions, sometimes contracted while the parties were children. William, Earl of Pembroke, was one of the many who exhibited this doctrine in his practice. United to an heiress, for whose fortune even the grave Lord Clarendon observes, he paid “too dear by taking her person into the bargain,”[56] he devoted himself publicly to Christian, the daughter of Lord Bruce, afterwards Countess of Devonshire. To her he addressed those beautiful lines which were, with other poems, edited by Dr. Donne, prefixed with a fulsome dedication to the Countess.[57] Footnote 55: Clarendon, vol. i., p. 85; also, Lodge’s Portraits. Footnote 56: Clarendon, vol. i., p. 85; also, Lodge’s Portraits. Footnote 57: Peck’s Desiderata Curiosa, xiv., p. 541; Grainger’s Biographical History of England, Art. Pembroke. To Pembroke, Buckingham was, perhaps, indebted for that love of the arts and taste for building and embellishments which afterwards distinguished the lordly proprietor of York House and Burleigh. It is, however, painful to reflect that not three years after the good offices performed by Lord Pembroke to Villiers, a coolness took place upon some matters of little moment compared with the debt of gratitude due to the Earl by the favourite.[58] Footnote 58: