rench Lord-High-Chancellor, without the smallest suspicion of who he
was!" Of French women Cooper adds: "The highest style of French beauty
is classical. I cannot recall a more lovely picture than the Duchess
de----[this title and blank are said to veil the identity of the
Princess Galitzin] in full dress at a carnival ball, where she shone
peerless among hundreds of the _elite_ of Europe. And yet this woman was
a grandmother!"

[Illustration: THE PRINCESS BARBARA VASSILIEWNA GALITZIN.]

In a letter dated Paris, November 28, 1826, written by Mrs. Cooper to
her sister, appears of Mr. Cooper:--"They make quite a Lion of him and
Princesses write to him and he has invitations from Lords and Ladies. He
has so many notes from the Princess Galitzin I should be absolutely
jealous were it not that she is a Grandmother. We were at a Soiree there
the other evening among Dutchesses, Princesses, Countesses, etc."

[Illustration: LA GRANGE, COUNTRY HOME OF LAFAYETTE.]

[Illustration: LA GRANGE ARCHWAY ENTRANCE.]

Once with and twice without Mrs. Cooper, the author visited La Grange,
the country home of General Lafayette, some twenty-seven miles from
Paris and near Rosay. He tells us that La Grange means barn, granary, or
farm, and that the chateau came to Lafayette through his wife; that it
had some five hundred acres of wood, pasture, meadow, and cultivated
land; that the house is of hewn stone, good grayish color, with its five
plain, round towers and their high, pyramidal slate roofs making a part
of the walls; that the end towers are buried in ivy planted by Charles
Fox. He tells how small, irregular windows open beautifully through the
thick foliage for the blooming faces of children, in their home-part of
La Grange. He gives rare pictures of the great stairway, the General's
bed-room, cabinet, and library in the tower-angle overlooking the
willow-shaded moat. Beneath this library was the author's own bed-room.
Then came the array of drawing-rooms and innumerable other rooms, where
hospitality seemed to know no limit. Lafayette's cabinet contained
many portraits,--one of Madame de Stael, and one of his own father. Of
this room, and the library, and his grand old host Cooper wrote: "I
passed much of our visit alone with him in these two rooms. No one can
be pleasanter in private, and he is full of historical anecdotes that he
tells with great simplicity and frequently with great humor." The
chateau stands on three sides of an