glory and beauty of the world more rapturously, more _painfully_--for
there is pain in it!--than when one was standing alone on a December
morning, at a window which seemed to make part of the precipitous rock
itself, looking over that fairest of scenes. From Ravello we went back
to Rome, and a short spell of its joys. What is it makes the peculiar
pleasure of society in Rome? A number of elements, of course, enter in.
The setting is incomparable; while the clashing of great world policies,
represented by the diplomats, and of the main religious and Liberal
forces of Europe, as embodied in the Papacy and modern Italy, kindles a
warmth and animation in the social air which matches the clearness of
the Roman day, when the bright spells of the winter weather arrive, and
the omnipresent fountains of the Eternal City flash the January or
February sun through its streets and piazzas. Ours, however, on this
occasion, was only a brief stay. Again we saw Contessa Maria, this time
in the stately setting of the Palazzo Sciarra; and Count Ugo Balzani, an
old friend of ours and of the Creightons since Oxford days, historian
and thinker, and, besides, one of the kindest and truest of men. But the
figure, perhaps, which chiefly stands out in memory as connected with
this short visit is that of Lord Dufferin, then our Ambassador in Rome.
Was there ever a greater charmer than Lord Dufferin? In the sketch of
the "Ambassador" in _Eleanor_, there are some points caught from the
living Lord Dufferin, so closely, indeed, that before the book came out
I sent him the proofs and asked his leave--which he gave at once, in one
of the graceful little notes of which he was always master. For the
diplomatic life and successes of Lord Dufferin are told in many official
documents and in the biography of him by Sir Alfred Lyall; but the key
to it all lay in cradle gifts that are hard to put into print.

In the first place, he was--even at sixty-five--wonderfully handsome. He
had inherited the beauty, and also the humor and the grace, of his