month of January, to get out of bed in the Louvre, and in the eyes of a French court.  We read in histories, with horror, of baseness less monstrous than this; and the little concern I have met with about it in most people’s minds, has obliged me to make, I believe, a thousand times, this reflection,—­that examples of times past move men beyond comparison more than those of their own times.  We accustom ourselves to what we see; and I have sometimes told you, that I doubted whether Caligula’s horse being made a consul would have surprised us so much as we imagine.”  —­Memoirs, vol. i., p. 261.  As for the relative situation of the king and Lord Jermyn, (afterwards St. Albans,) Lord Clarendon says, that the “Marquis of Ormond was compelled to put himself in prison, with other gentlemen, at a pistole a-week for his diet, and to walk the streets a-foot, which was no honourable custom in Paris, whilst the Lord Jermyn kept an excellent table for those who courted him, and had a coach of his own, and all other accommodations incident to the most full fortune:  and if the king had the most urgent occasion for the use but of twenty pistoles, as sometimes he had, he could not find credit to borrow it, which he often had experiment of.”  —­History of the Rebellion, vol. iii., p. 2.]

Jermyn, supported by his uncle’s wealth, found it no difficult matter to make a considerable figure upon his arrival at the court of the Princess of Orange:  the poor courtiers of the king her brother could not vie with him in point of equipage and magnificence; and these two articles often produce as much success in love as real merit:  there is no necessity for any other example than the present; for though Jermyn was brave, and certainly a gentleman, yet he had neither brilliant actions, nor distinguished rank, to set him off; and as for his fibre, there was nothing advantageous in it.  He was little:  his head was large and his legs small; his features were not disagreeable, but he was affected in his carriage and behaviour.  All his wit consisted in expressions learnt by rote, which he occasionally employed either in raillery, or in love.  This was the whole foundation of the merit of a man so formidable in amours.

The Princess Royal was the first who was taken with him:  Miss Hyde seemed to be following the steps of her mistress:  this immediately brought him into credit, and his reputation was established in England before his arrival.  Prepossession in the minds of women is sufficient to find access to their hearts:  Jermyn found them in dispositions so favourable for him, that he had nothing to do but to speak.

It was in vain they perceived that a reputation so lightly established, was still more weakly sustained:  the prejudice remained:  the Countess of Castlemaine, a woman lively and discerning followed the delusive shadow; and though undeceived in a reputation which promised so much, and performed so little, she nevertheless continued in her infatuation:  she even persisted in it, until she was upon the point of embroiling herself with the King; so great was this first instance of her constancy.