intermarriages, which, by the way, are nearly, if not quite, as circumscribed among the Protestants as among the Catholics.  The portion of Europe that is governed by princes, is divided among forty-four different states,[21] of whom twenty-eight are Protestant, one a Greek, one a Mahomedan, and the rest are Catholics.  These forty-four sovereigns claim to be descended from nineteen different roots:  thus, the direct male descendants of Hugh Capet occupy the thrones of France, Spain, Naples, Lucca, and Portugal; the latter being derived from an illegitimate son of a Duke of Burgundy, before the accession of the Bourbon branch.  The houses of Austria, Baden, Tuscany, and Modena, are derived from a Duke of Alsace, who flourished in the seventh century.  I was mistaken in a former letter, in saying that the family of Lorraine is different from that of Habsbourg, for it is said to be derived in the male line equally from this Prince of Alsace.  The Hohenzollerns are on the throne of Prussia, and possess the two little principalities of that name; while the Emperor of Russia is merely a Prince of Holstein.  These families have been intermarrying for a thousand years, and it is not possible that they should have entirely escaped some personal peculiarities; still, as a whole, they are quite as fine physical specimens of humanity, as the average of their subjects.  The Princes of Russia are singularly fine men; the house of Denmark well-looking; the Saxons, the royal branch excepted, more than usually so; the house of Wurtemburg very like the English family; the Bourbons, as a family, are a fine race; the Austrians peculiar, and less comely, though the women are often quite handsome; Don Miguel is a little beauty, very mild and gentleman-like in his appearance, though Lady ——­, who sat next him at dinner, on a certain occasion, assured me she saw nothing but blood and rapine in his countenance!  Her father, Lord ——­, one of the ablest men of his time, and one familiar with high political events, gravely assured me he gave implicit credence to the tales we have heard of the outrages committed by this prince, and which, if true, render him a fit subject for the gallows.  But I have seen so much of the exaggeration of factions, that incredulity, perhaps, has got to be a fault with me.  I longed to tell Lord ——­ what I had heard, in England, under his very nose, of himself!  Among other absurdities, I had, shortly before this very conversation, heard a respectable Englishman affirm that such was the morgue aristocratique of this nobleman, that he compelled his wife and daughters to walk backwards, in quitting his presence, as is done at court!  This was said of a man, whom I found to be of more simple, off-hand, unpretending, gentleman-like deportment, whose demeanour had more of the nice tact which neither offends by superciliousness, nor wounds by condescension, than that of any other man of rank in England.  To return to our subject;—­the Austrian face is, certainly, getting to be prevalent among the southern catholic families, for all of them are closely allied to the house of Habsbourg by blood, but I do not see any more in the physique of the Saxon Dukes than the good old Saxon stamina, nor aught in the peculiar appearance of the royal branch but an accident.