figure, and with that air of affable dignity which becomes a noble, and which adorns a court; none of that affected indifference which seems to imply that nothing can compensate for the exertion of moving, and ‘which makes the dandy, while it mars the man.’ His large and somewhat sleepy grey eye, his clear complexion, his small mouth, his aquiline nose, his transparent forehead, his rich brown hair, and the delicacy of his extremities, presented, when combined, a very excellent specimen of that style of beauty for which the nobility of England are remarkable. Gentle, for he felt the importance of the tribunal, never loud, ready, yet a little reserved, he neither courted nor shunned examination. His finished manner, his experience of society, his pretensions to taste, the gaiety of his temper, and the liveliness of his imagination, gradually developed themselves with the developing hours.     

       The banquet was over: the Duke of St. James passed his examination with unqualified approval; and having been stamped at the mint of fashion as a sovereign of the brightest die, he was flung forth, like the rest of his golden brethren, to corrupt the society of which he was the brightest ornament.     

  

       CHAPTER V.     

      Sweeping Changes 

       THE morning after the initiatory dinner the young Duke drove to Hauteville House, his family mansion, situated in his family square. His Grace particularly prided himself on his knowledge of the arts; a taste for which, among other things, he intended to introduce into England. Nothing could exceed the horror with which he witnessed the exterior of his mansion, except the agony with which he paced through the interior.     

       ‘Is this a palace?’ thought the young Duke; ‘this hospital a palace!’      

       He entered. The marble hall, the broad and lofty double staircase painted in fresco, were not unpromising, in spite of the dingy gilding; but with what a mixed feeling of wonder and disgust did the Duke roam through clusters of those queer chambers which in England are called drawing-rooms!     

       ‘Where are the galleries, where the symmetrical saloons, where the lengthened suite, where the collateral cabinets, sacred to the statue of a nymph or the mistress of a 

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