a Caesar or an Alcibiades. Beautiful, brilliant, and ambitious, the young
and restless Armine quitted, in his eighteenth year, the house of
his fathers, and his stepdame of a country, and entered the Imperial
service. His blood and creed gained him a flattering reception; his
skill and valour soon made him distinguished. The world rang with
stories of his romantic bravery, his gallantries, his eccentric manners,
and his political intrigues, for he nearly contrived to be elected King
of Poland. Whether it were disgust at being foiled in this high object
by the influence of Austria, or whether, as was much whispered at the
time, he had dared to urge his insolent and unsuccessful suit on a still
more delicate subject to the Empress Queen herself, certain it is that
Sir Ferdinand suddenly quitted the Imperial service, and appeared at
Constantinople in person. The man whom a point of honour prevented from
becoming a Protestant in his native country had no scruples about his
profession of faith at Stamboul: certain it is that the English baronet
soon rose high in the favour of the Sultan, assumed the Turkish dress,
conformed to the Turkish customs, and finally, led against Austria a
division of the Turkish army. Having gratified his pique by defeating
the Imperial forces in a sanguinary engagement, and obtaining a
favourable peace for the Porte, Sir Ferdinand Armine doffed his turban,
and suddenly reappeared in his native country. After the sketch we have
given of the last ten years of his life, it is unnecessary to observe
that Sir Ferdinand Armine immediately became what is called fashionable;
and, as he was now in Protestant England, the empire of fashion was the
only one in which the young Catholic could distinguish himself. Let us
then charitably set down to the score of his political disabilities
the fantastic dissipation and the frantic prodigality in which the
liveliness of his imagination and the energy of his soul exhausted
themselves. After three startling years he married the Lady Barbara
Ratcliffe, whose previous divorce from her husband, the Earl of
Faulconville, Sir Ferdinand had occasioned. He was, however, separated
from his lady during the first year of their more hallowed union, and,
retiring to Rome, Sir Ferdinand became apparently devout. At the end of
a year he offered to transfer the whole of his property to the Church,
provided the Pope would allow him an annuity and make him a cardinal.
His Holiness n