de its appearance--may well
have thought that Ulysses himself had not seen men and cities to greater
advantage than the beautiful wanderer whom he was destined first {150} to
love and then to hate. As we read her letters we seem to live with her
in the great, gay, gloomy life of Vienna, to hear once more the foolish
squabbles of Ratisbon society as to who should and should not be styled
Excellency, and to smile at the loyal crowds of English thronging the
wretched inns of Hanover. But the fidelity of her descriptions may best
be judged from her accounts of life in Constantinople. The Vienna of
to-day is very different from the ill-built, high-storied city of Maria
Theresa; but the condition of Constantinople has scarcely changed with
the century and a half that has gone by since Lady Mary was English
Ambassadress there. She seems, indeed, to have seen the heads upon the
famous monument of bronze twisted serpents in the Hippodrome; and perhaps
she did, for Spon and Wheler's sketch of it in 1675 gives it with the
triple heads still perfect, though these serpent heads, and all traces of
them, have long since disappeared. In Constantinople Lady Mary first
became acquainted with that principle of inoculation for the small-pox
which she so enthusiastically advocated, which she introduced into
England in spite of so much hostility and disfavor, and which, now
accepted by almost all the civilized world, is still wrangled fiercely
over in England.

[Sidenote: 1716--Lady Mary's career]

Perhaps we may anticipate by some half-century to tell of Lady Mary's
further career. She came back to London again, and shone as brilliantly
as before, and was made love to by Pope, and laughed at her lover, and
was savagely scourged by him in return with whips of stinging and
shameful satire. One can understand better the story of the daughters of
Lycambes hanging themselves under the pain of the iambics of Archilochus
when one reads the merciless cruelty with which the great English
satirist treated the woman he had loved. When Lady Mary grew old she
went away abroad to live, without any opposition on her husband's part.
They parted with mutual indifference and mutual esteem. She lived for
many years in Italy, chiefly in Venice. Then she came back to London for
a short time to live in lodgings off Hanover Square, and be the curiosity
of the town; and then she died. Lady Mary always had a dread of growing
old; and she grew old and il