H—— B——, whose diplomatic promotion goes on much faster than can be pleasing to “_Lady Cheveley_,” has just received his appointment to Paris—the object of his first wishes. He stood near his brother, talking to a beautiful and celebrated woman, and I thought, spite of her ladyship’s unflattering description, I had seldom seen a more intellectual face, or a more gentlemanly and elegant exterior.
Late in the evening came in his Royal Highness the duke of C——, and I wondered, as I had done many times before, when in company with one of these royal brothers, at the uncomfortable etiquette so laboriously observed toward them. Wherever he moved in the crowded rooms, everybody rose and stood silent, and by giving way much more than for any one else, left a perpetual circular space around him, in which, of course, his conversation had the effect of a lecture to a listening audience. A more embarrassed manner and a more hesitating mode of speech than the duke’s, I can not conceive. He is evidently _gene_ to the last degree with this burdensome deference; and one would think that in the society of highly-cultivated and aristocratic persons, such as were present, he would be delighted to put his highness into his pocket when the footman leaves him at the door, and hear no more of it till he goes again to his carriage. There was great curiosity to know whether the Duke would think it etiquetical to speak to the Persian, as in consequence of the difference between the Shah and the British Envoy the tall minister is not received at the court of St. James. Lady S—— introduced them, however, and then the Duke again must have felt his rank nothing less than a nuisance. It is awkward enough at any time, to converse with a foreigner who has not forty English words in his vocabulary, but what with the Duke’s hesitating and difficult utterance, the silence and attention of the listening guests, and the Persian’s deference and complete inability to comprehend a syllable, the scene was quite painful.
There was some of the most exquisite amateur singing I ever heard after the company thinned off a little, and the fashionable song of the day was sung by a most beautiful woman in a way to move half the company to tears. It is called “Ruth,” and is a kind of recitative of the passage in Scripture, “_Where thou goest I will go_,” &c.