doubt of that whatever, and as all the detail is in the published correspondence, little more need be said.  The wooden Antinous, in Petersburg, for his sole comment, writes as follows:  “I learn with sorrow that you are still subjected to vexations from anonymous letters, etc.  I suppose that Sheridan is the author, though one would have imagined that, however depraved his morals, and however malignant might be his mind, he would have had good taste enough not to have resorted to such a species of vengeance.”  And that was all the fire to be blown into Antinous.  “Good taste” in the circumstances is comic.

By the end of the season of the same year, however, Sheridan seems to have found out what he had done, and Lady Bessborough also sufficient self-respect to have helped him find it out.  This is what happened on July 12th, at a ball.  “I sat between Prince Adolphus and Mr. Hill at supper; Sheridan sat opposite, looking by turns so supplicating and so fiercely at me that everybody round observ’d it and question’d me about it.  I could only say what was so, that he was very drunk.  When I got up, he seiz’d my arm as I pass’d him, begging me to shake hands with him.  I extricated myself from his grasp and pass’d on; he soon after follow’d and began loudly reproaching me for my cruelty, and asking why I would not shake hands.  I was extremely distress’d, but at last told him his own sagacity might explain to him why I never would, and that his conduct to-night did not tend to alter my determination.  I then hurried out of the room, and by way of completely avoiding him, cross’d a very formal circle of old ladies, and went and seated myself between Lady Euston and Lady Beverly.  He had the impudence to follow me, and in face of the whole circle to enter into a loud explanation of his conduct, begging my pardon for all the offences he had ever committed against me, either on this night or in former times, and assuring me that he had never ceased loving, respecting and adoring me, and that I was the only person he ever really loved....”  “Think,” she says, “of the dismay of all the formal ladies.”  But the formal ladies, no doubt, had every reason to know their Devonshire House set; and if society in 1805 would allow Sheridan to be drunk and stay at a ball, it would prefer him maudlin drunk to drunk and disorderly.  One is bound to add, too, that Lady Bessborough was a fool, though that, to be sure, is no excuse for Sheridan proving himself both old blackguard and old fool in one.

Next year the Duchess died, and her sister’s active persecution appears to have ceased.  But Sheridan by no means let her alone.  On the contrary, he had the assurance to send as intercessor no less a person than the Prince Regent.  “The Prince sent so repeatedly to me, and has been throughout so kind and feeling that I thought it wrong to persist in refusing to see him, so to-day he came soon after two and stayed till six!...  He gave me a very