lord treasurer, Oxford, had one son, the second earl.  He was the friend of Swift, to whom the dean addressed so many letters.  A man of literary tastes, he spent a portion of his immense fortune in forming the finest library of the period, and it is to him the student is indebted for the magnificent collection known as the “Harleian,” which subsequently became, by purchase, the property of the nation, and is deposited in the British Museum.  He married the greatest heiress of the day, Lady Henrietta Cavendish-Holies, only daughter and heir of the duke of Newcastle (of the Holies creation—­the present duke, a Pelham-Clinton, derives from a different descent).  He left but one daughter.  She married the second duke of Portland, grandson of Dutch William’s pet page Bentinck, whom he imported into England, and loaded with honors and emolument until even the House of Commons of that day cried out loudly, “Enough! stop!” Through this lady the Bentincks got Welbeck, the duke of Portland’s chief seat to-day.

Meanwhile, the Oxford honors and patrimonial estates in Herefordshire passed to the second earl’s first cousin, and so on, in regular succession, until the earldom became extinct by the death of Lady Langdale’s brother a few years ago.  One of Lady Langdale’s sisters married a General Bacon.  At the time of the marriage he was but a poor captain, and his wealth did not much increase, whilst his family did, and his wife, the once beautiful Lady Charlotte, Byron’s “Ianthe”—­to whom he addressed the famous lines which form the prelude of Childe Harold, beginning,

  Not in those climes where I have late been straying—­

had to see her daughter a governess in the family of a Cornishman, once a common miner!  One of her daughters is now married to the son of Lord Mount Edgecumbe’s agent.  It seems that the sisters could not forgive the mesalliance, as they deemed it, for Lady Langdale’s will shows no bequest to the Bacons.

Lady Langdale had another sister, who married a son of Doctor Vernon-Harcourt, long archbishop of York, grandfather of “Historicus,” the well-known political letter-writer of the London Times.  This lady died about the same time as Lady Langdale.  One sister only, the wife of a foreign nobleman, survives.  She is the last of the Harleys of the great minister’s line.

A GLASS OF OLD MADEIRA.

We had met in Europe some dozen years ago—­I from Massachusetts, he from Carolina.  We both looked grave for an instant as a friend presented us to each other, naming our respective residences, and then both laughed cheerily, and were good friends ever after.  We enjoyed Tartuffe and the Mariage de Figaro in company with each other at the Theatre Francois, heard Mario, Grisi, Gratiano and Borghi Mamo in Verdi’s Trovatore at the Opera Italien, danced with les filles de l’Opera at Cellarius’s saloons, and