dier Charles, first Earl of Monmouth and
third Earl of Peterborough, hauled down his flag before the battery of
Anastasia Robinson's charms, and made a Countess of his victor, a
coronet has dazzled the eyes of many an actress with its rainbow
allurement, and has proved the passport by which she has stepped from
the stage to the gilded circle which environs the throne.

The hero of the Peninsula and the terror of the French was an old man,
with one foot in the grave, when the "nightingale" of the London
theatres brought him to his gouty knees; but so resolute was he to give
her his name that, to make assurance doubly sure, he faced the altar
twice with her, before starting on his honeymoon journey across the
Channel.

Pope, who was a friend of the amorous Earl, draws a pathetic picture of
him in the latter unromantic days of his romance. During a visit to
Bevis Mount, near Southampton, the poet writes:

"I found my Lord Peterborough on his couch, where he gave
me an account of the excessive sufferings he had passed
through, with a weak voice, but spirited. He next told me
he had ended his domestic affairs through such
difficulties from the law that gave him as much torment
of mind as his distemper had done of body, to do right to
the person to whom he had obligations beyond expression
(Anastasia Robinson). That he had found it necessary not
only to declare his marriage to all his relations, but
since the person who married them was dead, to re-marry
her in the church at Bristol, before witnesses. He talks
of getting toward Lyons; but undoubtedly he can never
travel but to the sea-shore. I pity the poor woman who
has to share in all he suffers, and who can, in no one
thing, persuade him to spare himself."

Pope, however, understated the Earl's vigour or his indomitable spirit;
for he not only succeeded in getting to the sea-shore, but as far as
Lisbon, where he died in the following October, but a few months after
his second nuptials. My Lady Peterborough and Monmouth lived to see many
more years, and by her dignity and sweetness to win as much approval in
the Peerage as in the lowlier sphere of the stage.

Anastasia Robinson was the first star of the stage to wear a coronet,
but where she led the way, there were many dainty feet eager to follow;
and, curiously enough, it was Gay's famous _Beggar's Opera_ that pointed
the way to three of the