Bridgminster’s manners are almost as famous as his diplomatic gifts and achievements. They are, indeed, so perfect, that many—notably the women that have tried to marry him—aver that he is composed wholly of charm and brain; that his heart, if ever he had one, is buried in the American grave of his young wife, whom he had the terrible misfortune to lose so soon after his romantic marriage. That dramatic finale of his youthful happiness occurred not so long since but that people still gossip about it, recall his desperate flight to the Continent immediately after the funeral of the divine Mabel, where he affected the company to tears by his manifest woe. No one was surprised to hear of his illness—brain fever?—in one of the British Legations—Munich? Rome? Constantinople? He has such a vast connection, and details will slip from the best of memories.

When quite well again, however, he threw himself into work with an ardour! In the course of three or four years, between those gifts the............