of Toggenburg-Tannhauser, would be equally inconsiderable if she

were not a cutting instrument in the hands of an ambitious man. She

is much younger than the Prince, a girl of two-and-twenty, sick with

vanity, superficially clever, and fundamentally a fool. She has a

red-brown rolling eye, too large for her face, and with sparks of

both levity and ferocity; her forehead is high and narrow, her

figure thin and a little stooping. Her manners, her conversation,

which she interlards with French, her very tastes and ambitions, are

alike assumed; and the assumption is ungracefully apparent: Hoyden

playing Cleopatra. I should judge her to be incapable of truth. In

private life a girl of this description embroils the peace of

families, walks attended by a troop of scowling swains, and passes,

once at least, through the divorce court; it is a common and, except

to the cynic, an uninteresting type. On the throne, however, and in

the hands of a man like Gondremark, she may become the authoress of

serious public evils.

Gondremark, the true ruler of this unfortunate country, is a more

complex study. His position in Grunewald, to which he is a

foreigner, is eminently false; and that he should maintain it as he

does, a very miracle of impudence and dexterity. His speech, his

face, his policy, are all double: heads and tails. Which of the two

extremes may be his actual design he were a bold man who should

offer to decide. Yet I will hazard the guess that he follows both

experimentally, and awaits, at the hand of destiny, one of those

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