We have here a whole bevy of the heroines of De Grammont, delightful to those who have what Walpole used to call the "De Grammont madness" upon them. Here is that beautiful, audacious termagant, Castlemaine, very like her picture at Windsor, and with the same characteristic bit of storm gleaming in the background.--Lady Denham,[76] the wife of the poet, Sir John Denham, and niece of that Lord Bristol who figures in Vandyke's picture above mentioned--a lovely creature, and a sweet picture.--Louise de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, who so long ruled the heart and councils of Charles the Second, in Lely's finest style; the face has a look of blooming innocence, soon exchanged for coarseness and arrogance.--The indolent, alluring Middleton, looking from under her sleepy eyelids, "trop coquette pour rebuter personne."--"La Belle Hamilton," the lovely prize of the volatile De Grammont; very like her portrait at Windsor, with the same finely formed bust and compressed ruby lips, but with an expression more vivacious and saucy, and less elevated.--Two portraits of Nell Gwyn, with the fair brown air and small bright eyes they ought to have; _au reste_, with such prim, sanctified mouths, and dressed with such elaborate decency, that instead of reminding us of the "parole sciolte d'ogni freno, risi, vezzi, giuochi"--they are more like Beck Marshall, the puritan's daughter, on her good behaviour.[77] Here is that extraordinary woman Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin, the fame of whose beauty and gallantries filled all Europe, and once the intended wife of Charles the Second, though she afterwards intrigued in vain for the less (or more) eligible post of _maitresse en titre_. What an extraordinary, wild, perverted, good-for-nothing, yet interesting set of women, were those four Mancini sisters! all victims, more or less, to the pride, policy, or avarice, of their cardinal uncle; all gifted by nature with the fervid Italian blood and the plotting Italian brain; all really _aventuriéres_, while they figured as duchesses and princesses. They wore their coronets and ermine as strolling players wear their robes of state--with a sort of picturesque awkwardness--and they proved rather too scanty to cover a multitude of sins.