rt, who had it in his own possession. I desire you will keep yours; for
I shall not be very fond of a friend without one, and I have a great mind
you should be in the number of mine."

When Lord Peterborough was seventy years old, that indomitable youth
addressed some flaming love-, or rather gallantry-, letters to Mrs.
Howard--curious relics they are of the romantic manner of wooing sometimes
in use in those days. It is not passion; it is not love; it is gallantry:
a mixture of earnest and acting; high-flown compliments, profound bows,
vows, sighs, and ogles, in the manner of the Clelie romances, and
Millamont and Doricourt in the comedy. There was a vast elaboration of
ceremonies and etiquette, of raptures--a regulated form for kneeling and
wooing which has quite passed out of our downright manners. Henrietta
Howard accepted the noble old earl's philandering; answered the queer
love-letters with due acknowledgement; made a profound curtsey to
Peterborough's profound bow; and got John Gay to help her in the
composition of her letters in reply to her old knight. He wrote her
charming verses, in which there was truth as well as grace. "O wonderful
creature!" he writes:--

O wonderful creature, a woman of reason!
Never grave out of pride, never gay out of season!
When so easy to guess who this angel should be,
Who would think Mrs. Howard ne'er dreamt it was she?

The great Mr. Pope also celebrated her in lines not less pleasant, and
painted a portrait of what must certainly have been a delightful lady:--

I know a thing that's most uncommon--
Envy, be silent and attend!--
I know a reasonable woman,
Handsome, yet witty, and a friend:

Not warp'd by passion, aw'd by rumour,
Not grave through pride, or gay through folly:
An equal mixture of good humour
And exquisite soft melancholy.

Has she no faults, then (Envy says), sir?
Yes, she has one, I must aver--
When all the world conspires to praise her,
The woman's deaf, and does not hear!

Even the women concurred in praising and loving her. The Duchess of
Queensberry bears testimony to her amiable qualities, and writes to her:
"I tell you so and so, because you love children, and to have children
love you." The beautiful, jolly Mary Bellenden, represented by
contemporaries as "the most perfect creature ever known", writes very
pleasantly to her "dear Howard", her "dear Swiss", from t