importance through all) had collected those likenesses
of noble contemporaries. As you passed through the chambers--opening one
on the other in that pomp of parade introduced with Charles II. from
the palaces of France, and retaining its mode till Versailles and the
Trianon passed, themselves, out of date--you felt you were in excellent
company. What saloons of our day, demeaned to tailed coats and white
waistcoats, have that charm of high breeding which speaks out from
the canvas of Kneller and Jervis, Vivien and Rigaud? And withal,
notwithstanding lace and brocade--the fripperies of artificial
costume--still those who give interest or charm to that day look from
their portraits like men,--raking or debonair, if you will, never
mincing nor feminine. Can we say as much of the portraits of Lawrence?
Gaze there on fair Marlborough; what delicate perfection of features,
yet how easy in boldness, how serene in the conviction of power! So
fair and so tranquil he might have looked through the cannon reek at
Ramillies and Blenheim, suggesting to Addison the image of an angel
of war. Ah, there, Sir Charles Sedley, the Lovelace of wits! Note
that strong jaw and marked brow; do you not recognize the courtier who
scorned to ask one favour of the king with whom he lived as an equal,
and who stretched forth the right hand of man to hurl from a throne the
king who had made his daughter--a countess?

[Sedley was so tenacious of his independence that when his affairs
were most embarrassed, he refused all pecuniary aid from Charles II.
His bitter sarcasm, in vindication of the part he took in the
deposition of James II., who had corrupted his daughter, and made
her Countess of Dorchester, is well known. "As the king has made my
daughter a countess, the least I can do, in common gratitude, is to
assist in making his Majesty's daughter--a queen!"]

Perhaps, from his childhood thus surrounded by the haunting faces--that
spoke of their age as they looked from the walls--that age and those
portraits were not without influence on the character of Harley
L'Estrange. The whim and the daring, the passion for letters and
reverence for genius, the mixture of levity and strength, the polished
sauntering indolence, or the elastic readiness of energies once called
into action,--all might have found their prototypes in the lives which
those portraits rekindled. The deeper sentiment, the more earnest
nature, which in Harley L'Est