roduced the quadrille from Paris.

"I recollect," says Captain Gronow, "the persons who
formed the first quadrille that was ever danced there.
They were Lady Jersey, Lady Harriet Buller, Lady Susan
Ryder, and Miss Montgomery; the men being the Count St
Aldegonde, Mr Montgomery, and Charles Standisti."

It was at Almack's, too, that she introduced the waltz, which so
shocked the proprieties even in that easy-going age.

"What scenes," writes Mr T. Raikes, "have we witnessed in
these days at Almack's! What fear and trembling in the
_debutantes_ at the commencement of a waltz, what
giddiness and confusion at the end! It was, perhaps,
owing to the latter circumstance that so violent an
opposition soon arose to the new recreation on the score
of morality. The anti-waltzing party took the alarm, and
cried it down; mothers forbade it, and every ballroom
became a scene of feud and contention."

But through it all Lady Jersey circled round and round the ballroom
divinely, with Prince Paul Esterhazy, Baron Tripp, St Aldegonde, and
many another graceful exponent of the new dance, for partners; and her
victory was complete when the world of fashion saw the arm of the
Emperor Alexander, his uniform ablaze with decorations, round her waist,
twirling ecstatically, if ungracefully, round in the intoxication of the
waltz.

For fifty years, Lord Jersey's Countess reigned supreme in the social
world, carrying her autocracy and her charms into old age. As was
inevitable to such a dominant personality she made enemies, who resented
her airs and scoffed at her graces. Lady Granville called her "a
tiresome, quarrelsome woman"; the Duke of Wellington, one of her most
abject slaves, once exclaimed, "What ---- nonsense Lady Jersey talks!"
and Granville declared that she had "neither wit, nor imagination, nor
humour." But to the last day of her long life she retained the homage
and admiration of hundreds, over whom she cast the spell of her beauty
and personal charm.

The evening of her life was clouded by a succession of tragedies, each
sufficient to break the spirit of a less indomitable woman. One by one,
her children, the pride of her life, were taken from her; but she hid
her breaking heart from the world, and in the intervals between her
bereavements she showed as brave and bright a face as in the days of her
unclouded youth. The death in 1858 of her daughter, Cle