sweetness of the blood that would not be confined in the
communicating itself--an overflowing of good nature, of which he
had such a stream that it would not be restrained within the
banks of a crabbed and unsociable virtue."

The ease and freedom of his continental life had no doubt
fostered this lamentable depravity; for his misfortunes as an
exiled king by no means prevented him following his inclinations
as an ardent lover. Accordingly, his intrigues at that time were
numerous, as may be judged from the fact of Lady Byron being
described as "his seventeenth mistress abroad." The offspring of
one of his continental mistresses was destined to plunge the
English nation into civil warfare, and to suffer a traitor's
death on Tower Hill in the succeeding reign.

"The profligacy which Charles practised abroad not being
discontinued at home, he resumed in England an intrigue commenced
at Brussels a short time before the restoration. The object of
this amour was the beautiful Barbara Palmer, afterwards, by
reason of her lack of virtue, raised to the peerage under the
titles of Countess of Castlemaine, and Duchess of Cleveland.
This lady, who became a most prominent figure in the court of the
merry monarch, was daughter of William, second Viscount
Grandison, a brave gentleman and a loyal, who had early in life
fallen in the civil war whilst fighting for his king. He is
described as having, among other gifts, "a faultless person," a
boon, which descended to his only child, the bewitching Barbara.
In the earliest dawn of her womanhood she encountered her first
lover in the person of Philip Stanhope, second Earl of
Chesterfield. My lord was at this time a youthful widower, and