and Lady Betty Modish and Indamore; and it was tempered by her infinite good nature, which made her make excuses for the actors instead of being provoked at them."

It is to be feared that her first liaison was but the first. According to Charles Pigott, the author of the Jockey Club, which, it must be said, is a scandalous and unreliable work, "When Lord Craven perceived. that she was become a democratic in love, and had shown marks of complaisance to the canaille, he was surly, and indignant, and advised her to take herself of. The Peer settled £1,500 a year upon his

According to Lady Craven, however, the real reason for the separation was that her husband had taken unto himself a mistress, a Mrs. Byne or Byrne, with whom he lived for the rest of his life. Walpole, who had a sincere affection for her, had, however, doubts about the correctness of her conduct. "She has, I fear, been infinitamente indiscreet, but what is that to you or me?" he wrote to Sir Horace Mann. "She is very pretty, has parts, and is good-natured to the greatest degree, has not a grain of malice or mischief (almost always the associates in women of tender hearts), and never has been an enemy but to herself."

It is at this time of day immaterial whether husband or wife were to blame. Suffice that Lady Craven went to Paris in 1783; there she met Christian Frederick Charles Alexander, Margrave of Brandenburg, Anspach, and Bayreuth, who was at once greatly attracted by her, while she, for her part, thought him the best of men. In her Memoirs she says, His Serene Highness had had instilled into his mind the principles of duty to God and his parents, with a strict observance of the laws both.

human and divine, and was always at pains to benefit mankind or to protect the arts and sciences. Of how many eighteenth-century princes could this be said?" she wrote. "He bound those who were connected with him by his humanity, his indulgence, and the popularity of his manners. When he became a sovereign he cultivated and encouraged all the arts, and was particularly partial to the Latin language. In every action of his life he evinced the happy effects of his good education; but most particularly in the government of his principalities, and the administration of his own private affairs. His maxims were well digested; designed not for ostentation, but for the regulation of life. It may here be remarked that, however liberal Nature may be with her gifts, though she grant profusely good qualities to a man, unless a wise and diligent education direct them, and the spark of virtue be fanned by the breath of wisdom into a flame, good precepts may be extinguished, or do more harm than good, by causing base actions." At the age of eighteen he had contracted an alliance with a Princess of Saxe-Coburg.

"The Margravine, his wife," she wrote, was born with an inward defect of bodily constitution; which made her so unhealthy that at thirteen years old she became subject to fits. Mental or corporeal enjoyments of any kind she never could have possessed; she was in a continual state of bodily pain. Naturally fair, sickness gave her the appearance of a faded lily when it begins to assume a yellow hue. With the best intentions, she had not the power, even of countenance, to give expression to a feeling. Such was the person given to the most lively, the most ardent, and the most active young man; and although his own passions, the allurements of every beautiful woman to please him, the many

concerted schemes of politicians to persuade him to a divorce after his marriage, that he might marry a young and healthy Princess who might produce an heir to his principalities, would have been motives sufficient for the generality of men; yet nothing could seduce the Margrave from what he imagined to be a duty. Reasons of every kind were adopted; some of which were very plausible, nay even justifiable: the facility of divorces in the Protestant countries of Germany, the duties he owed to posterity, his own private interest that his sovereignty might not pass from his family at his death -all these were used in vain. "I am her husband," he replied to all these persuasions; therefore, as long as she lives, as her husband I am bound to protect her.' The cold and dignified manner in which he spoke this negative put an end to all the hopes, and all the plots which were eternally forming around him, to urge him to shake off the bonds into which he had been forced.

In fact, the Margrave, it would appear, was an Admirable Crichton, and, to boot, an Admirable Crichton unsuitably mated. Lady Craven sympathised with this unfortunate gentleman, and he was so appreciative of her kindness that very soon a censorious world coupled together their names. Lady Craven was most distressed at the interpretation put upon this innocent friendship, and she at once made it known that she had known His Serene Highness all her life. It must be noted, however, that the Margrave, who was a nephew of the Consort of George II, came to England in 1763, when she was thirteen years of age, and that it is not known that Lady Craven ever went abroad until now. However, there is her word for it that the relations were platonic, for, writing to him from Paris in 1785, she says: "The honour you do me, in wishing to hear