ed on the 17th of February, 1803.

(257) The States-General did not open until May 5, 1789.

(258) The Convocation of the Notables took place the 19th of
December.

(259) Armand Charles Emmanuel, Comte de Hautefort, was born in
1741; he bore the title of Grand d'Espagne through his marriage in
1761 with the Comtesse de Hochenfels de Bavere Grand d'Espagne de la
premiere classe.

Richmond of to-day, with its villas and streets, a town of houses
occupied by professional and business men who spend their life in
London, is unlike the gay and lively resort of the last days of the
eighteenth century. Then the elite of the fashionable society of
England gathered on the hill and by the river as people now do on
the Riviera or in Cairo. "Richmond is in the first request this
summer," so wrote Walpole in the very year at which we have now
arrived. "Mrs. Bouverie is settled there with a large Court. The
Sheridans are there too, and the Bunburys. I go once or twice a week
to George Selwyn late in the evening when he comes in from walking;
about as often to Mrs. Ellis here and to Lady Cecilia at Hampton."
Once in Richmond men and women stayed there walking, talking, and
calling on each other, sometimes driving into London, but enjoying
it as a residence, not as a mere resort for an evening's pleasure.
Selwyn communicated the news of Richmond to his country friends as
one does in these days when at some German Spa. It may seem to us,
to whom so many opportunities of enjoyment of all kinds and in all
parts of the world are open, a tame kind of life to spend days and
nights strolling about a London suburb, attending assemblies,
playing at cards, with now and then a visit to town or a row on the
river. But our ancestors were necessarily limited in their
pleasures, and to them Richmond was a God-send, especially to men
like Selwyn, or Queensberry, or Walpole, who delighted in social
intercourse, and liked to enjoy what they called rustic life with as
much comfort as the age provided. Something of this life we have
learned from Walpole's and Miss Berry's letters, but no truer
picture of it can be found than in the last letters of Selwyn. To
the ordinary habitues of Richmond, however, there were in 1789 and
1790 added a throng of French ladies and gentlemen. Driven from
their agreeable salons in Paris, they endeavoured to make the best
of life among their English friends at Richmond. Exiled among a
people whose language few of them