effective part in the achievement of their present position, and has laurels, if rather withered ones, to rest upon. He was inclined as a youth, it was said, to the study of military science; and he has actually been a soldier, and has fought his way, and stubbornly fought it, to the enjoyment of these possessions of his, which were procured him originally through the persistent restless intriguing of his mother. Now, in the sense of prolonged security, he has grown slothful, and satisfied with minor triumphs, the greatest of which latterly has turned upon the successful nature of the negotiations for his daughter’s marriage with the Austrian Crown Prince. Isabelita is, it would really appear, to be an empress some day--not so bad a match for the daughter of only a younger son of Spain. Papa is very pleased, and inclined to regard the occasion as in the nature of a personal reward for years of, comparative, privation and ducal cheese-paring. He has not, in fact, to this day succeeded in bringing the profit and loss accounts of the duchy into line. Now, as he sits writing, he strikes us as being a thought over-bedizened for the task and the hour, which is early. Everything upon him, you will remark, is conceived according to a taste slightly in excess of that which is the northman’s limit. His smooth-fronted toupet stands up eight inches from his forehead, and is surmounted by a roll of sausage curls, which descend to two veritable _pains à café_ behind his ears; his cravat is a very muffler of Valenciennes, and is fastened by a brooch as big as a shoe-buckle; though presumably in _négligé_, he wears over a lace-ruffled cambric shirt, puffed from elbow to wrist, and garnished with mushroom-coloured ribbons, a pink silk vest covered with silver net; and shoes and breeches to match, dividing a space of white silk stockings, complete the elaborate picture. The only concession to business apparent about him is his ample loose-sleeved camisole; and even that is made of grey velvet lined with ermine. Altogether he suggests a Hogarth beau--a thing which, somewhat travestying fact in the artist’s own country, would pass for a faithful transcript here. The room in which we discover his Excellency is small but appropriately furnished. There is a good deal of glass and glitter in it, a characteristic perfume, some bright sketches by Boucher and a Lancret _fête galante_; and as noticeable a feature as any is a great dish of sweetmeats, having a little table of rosewood with brass mouldings to itself. The duke is writing to his wife at Versailles. He sucks a comfit as he evolves without difficulty his periods. Simple souls, often better than intellectual, write good letters: I have known an ingenuous athlete express himself with a neatness and clarity I could envy without reaching. Here are some sentences which I extract, as pertinent to our story, from the ducal epistle:--