e vortex. Women are never at home. The whole
early part of the day, which begins at two (for, going to bed at four
in the morning, they rise only at mid-day), is spent in visits and
exercise, for the English require, and their climate absolutely
necessitates, a great deal of exercise. The coal smoke, the constant
absence of sunshine, the heavy food and drink, make movement a necessity
to them.... If England had an oppressive Government, this country and
its inhabitants would be the lowest in the universe: a bad climate, bad
soil, hence no sort of taste; it is only the excellence of the political
constitution which renders it inhabitable. The nation is melancholy,
without any imagination, even without wit; the dominant characteristic
is a desire for money."

The same note as that even of such a man as Taine. The almost morbid
love of beauty which a civilisation, whose outward expression are the
lines and lines of black boxes, with slits for doors and windows of
Bloomsbury, produced in men like Coleridge, Blake, and Turner, naturally
escaped Mme. d'Albany; but the second great rebellion of imagination
and love of beauty, the rebellion led by Madox Brown and Morris, and
Rossetti and Burne Jones, escaped Taine. But of all the things which
most offended this quasi-Queen of England in our civilisation, the
social arrangements did so most of all. With the instinct of a woman who
has lived a by no means regular life in the midst of a society far worse
than herself, with the instinct of one of those strange pseudo-French
Continental mongrels with whom age always brings cynicism, she tries to
account for the virtue of Englishwomen by accidental, and often rather
nasty, necessities. Mme. d'Albany writes with the freedom and precision
of a Continental woman of the world of eighty years ago; and her remarks
lose too much or gain too much by translation into our chaster language.
"The charm of intimate society," she winds up, conscious of the charms
of her own little salon full of clever men and pretty women all
well-acquainted with each other--"the charm of intimate society is
unknown in England."

In short, the sooner England be quitted, the better. Political,
or rather financial circumstances--that is to say, the frightful
worthlessness of French money (and Alfieri's and her money came mainly
from France), made a return to Paris urgent.

An incident, as curious perhaps as that of Mme. d'Albany's presentation
at Court, but which