ia make peace!
whether we should give up Malta, and lose Hanover! Pitt must, indeed,
have been a man of "dark counsels," for, whether he wished for an
alliance with France or not was a nightly topic of debate, without a
chance of agreement.

All these discussions, far from tending to excite my ardour for the
career, served to make me dread it, as the most tiresome of all possible
pursuits. The light gossip, too, over which they regaled themselves with
such excellent relish, was insupportably dull. Who could care for the
pointless repartees of defunct Grand Dukes, or the meaningless caprices
of long-buried Archduchesses?

If, then, I was glad to escape from Gortham and its weary company, I had
formed no very sanguine expectations of pleasure at Vienna.

I saw very little of the Continent in this my first journey. I was
consigned to the charge of a cabinet messenger, who had orders to
deliver me "safe" at Vienna. Poor M'Kaye, slight as I was, he left me
very little of the small _coupe_ we travelled in. He weighed something
more than twenty stone, a heaving mass of fat and fretting: the great
misery of his life being that Washington Irving had held him up to
European ridicule, for he was the original "Stout Gentleman" whose heavy
perambulations overhead suggested that inimitable sketch.

We arrived at Vienna some hours after dark, and after speedily
traversing the narrow and winding streets of the capital, drew up within
the _porte-cochere_ of the English embassy. There was a grand ball
at the embassy--a sovereign's birth-day, or a coronation, I forget
which--but I can well remember the dazzling splendour of the grand
staircase, a blaze of wax-lights, and glittering with the brilliant
lustre of jewelled dresses and gorgeous uniforms; but, perhaps, even
more struck by the frequent announcement of names which were familiar
to me as almost historical personages--the Ester-hazies, the
Schwarzenbergs, and the Lichtensteins, when suddenly, with almost
a shock, I heard my own untitled name called aloud, "Mr. Horace
Templeton." It is, I believe, a very old gentry name, and has maintained
a fair repute for some half-dozen centuries; but, I own, it clinked
somewhat meagre on the ear amid the high-sounding syllables of Austrian
nobility.

I stood within the doorway of the grand salon, almost stunned by the
sudden transition from the dark monotony of a night-journey to the
noonday blaze of splendour before me, when a gentle tap