nly four families in all the British peerage
who could have furnished their daughter with the requisite number of
quarterings for one of those Austrian alliances.

In folly, as in wisdom, a principle is at least consistent; but that the
aristocratic pretensions of our upper class can never be: for our gentry
is of more ancient date in a great many instances, and our nobles are,
fortunately for themselves and us, a mixed race, admitting to the
temporary fellowship of social companionship and the permanent alliance
of matrimony, wealth, influence, beauty, and talent from every grade
beneath them; therefore they are fit to endure, and will endure longer
than any other European aristocracy, in spite of Prince Puckler Muskau's
epigram against the most "mushroom of nobilities."

The "airs" they do give themselves are, therefore, very droll, whereas
the similar pretensions of an Austrian _creme de la creme_ are
comprehensible and consistent--folly without a flaw, and rather
admirable in its kind as a specimen of human absurdity.... I have the
honor of being slightly acquainted with E----'s portrait painter. He is
a Scotch gentleman, of very great merit as an artist. He was in Rome the
winter I was there, and I met him in society, and saw several of his
pictures. He was rather injured artistically, I think, by living with
mad lords and silly ladies who used to pet and spoil him, which sort of
thing damages our artists, who become bitten with the "aristocratic"
mania, and destroy themselves as fine workmen in their desire to become
fine gentlemen.

There was a story in Rome about Lady C---- and the German princess, Lady
D----, going one day to Mr. ----'s studio and finding his fire out,
falling down on their own fair knees, and with their own fair hands
kindling it again for him. After this, how could he paint anything less
than a countess? Jesting apart, however, my dear Hal, the terms Mr. ----
asks are very high; and though he is a very elegant and graceful
portrait-painter, I would rather, upon the whole, sit to Richmond, whose
chalk drawings are the same price, and whose style is as good and more
vigorous.

You ask me why Mrs. ----, who is undoubtedly a clever woman, is also
undoubtedly a silly one?

If I wished to be saucy, which I never do and never am, I should tell
you, being an Irishwoman, that it was because she was Irish, and,
therefore, capable of a sort of intellectual bull; but, unluckily,
though ingenious, t