person and
aspect that commanded both love and admiration at once."

Among his many gifts was that of telling a story well--a rare one 'tis
true in all ages. Never was he better pleased than when, surrounded by
a group of gossips, he narrated some anecdote of which he was the hero;
and, though his tales were more than twice told, they were far from
tedious; inasmuch as, being set forth with brighter flashes of wit
and keener touches of irony, they were ever pleasant to hear. His
conversation was of a like complexion to his tales, pointed, shrewd, and
humorous; frequently--as became the manner of the times--straying far
afield of propriety, and taking liberties of expression of which nice
judgments could not approve. But indeed his majesty's speech was not
more free than his conduct was licentious. He could not think, he
gravely told Bishop Burnet, "God would make a man miserable for taking
a little pleasure out of the way." Accordingly he followed the free bent
of his desires, and his whole life was soon devoted to voluptuousness;
a vice which an ingenious courtier obligingly describes as a "warmth and
sweetness of the blood that would not be confined in the communicating
itself--an overflowing of good nature, of which he had such a stream
that it would not be restrained within the banks of a crabbed and
unsociable virtue."

The ease and freedom of his continental life had no doubt fostered this
lamentable depravity; for his misfortunes as an exiled king by no
means prevented him following his inclinations as an ardent lover.
Accordingly, his intrigues at that time were numerous, as may be judged
from the fact of Lady Byron being described as "his seventeenth mistress
abroad." The offspring of one of his continental mistresses was destined
to plunge the English nation into civil warfare, and to suffer a
traitor's death on Tower Hill in the succeeding reign.

"The profligacy which Charles practised abroad not being discontinued
at home, he resumed in England an intrigue commenced at Brussels a short
time before the restoration. The object of this amour was the beautiful
Barbara Palmer, afterwards, by reason of her lack of virtue, raised to
the peerage under the titles of Countess of Castlemaine, and Duchess of
Cleveland. This lady, who became a most prominent figure in the court of
the merry monarch, was daughter of William, second Viscount Grandison,
a brave gentleman and a loyal, who had early in life fallen in the