At his house are to be seen many of the 'Dii minores gentium,' such as actresses turned into duchesses and countesses, &c. who are not admitted into the circle 'par excellence.' * * * * * * * * A high degree of influence is also possessed by a foreign ambassador; and without doubt he would possess the very highest, if the best tone, kind-hearted amiability, high rank, the finest taste, and (notwithstanding an assumed English 'tournure') a perfect absence of that heaviness and pedantry, of which English fashionables can never divest themselves, constituted the sole claims to pre-eminence. But it is precisely because he is too far removed from the English, both by that native amiability which continually gains an involuntary conquest over his 'Anglo manie,' and by his German cordiality, that he excites their envy rather than their admiration; and though 'recherche' by most, because he is the fashion, remains a strange meteor in their system, whom they attack where they can, and whom, at all events, they cannot take to their hearts as they do their own Jupiter Ammon, nor acknowledge in him 'autorité sans replique' with that blind submission they pay to their Autocratess. Perhaps the wife of the ambassador might easily have played the part of that lady, whom she excels in beauty as well as in youth; and for a time the chances stood equal between them; but she was too heedless, too natural and good-tempered to obtain a definitive conquest. However high therefore be her place in the fashionable world, her rival has unquestionably achieved the highest. Nobody who knows the causes will think the loser the less amiable. Among the other female rulers of the first category, I must mention one or two whom no one may omit who seeks entrance into the sanctuary. At the very top, is a no longer young but still lovely Countess; one of the very few Englishwoman of whom it can be said, that she possesses a perfect, and truly distinguished 'tournure.' With her natural gifts she would, in any other country, have been thoroughly amiable and delightful; but here none can escape the deadening impress of that spirit of caste, so utterly blighted to all that is lovely and loving in the human heart. * * * * * * * *