introduced by Mary, Countess of Buckingham, the grandmother of the
graceful duke who is moving along the gallery;--and she invented those
once popular dances in order to introduce, with less chance of failure,
her rustic country cousins, who could not easily be taught to carry
themselves well in the brawl, or to step out gracefully in the coranto,
both of which dances required practice and time. In all these dances the
king shines the most, and dances much better than his brother the Duke
of York.

In these gay scenes De Grammont met with the most fashionable belles of
the court: fortunately for him they all spoke French tolerably; and he
quickly made himself welcome amongst even the few--and few indeed there
were--who plumed themselves upon untainted reputations. Hitherto those
French noblemen who had presented themselves in England had been poor
and absurd. The court had been thronged with a troop of impertinent
Parisian coxcombs, who had pretended to despise everything English, and
who treated the natives as if they were foreigners in their own country.
De Grammont, on the contrary, was familiar with every one: he ate, he
drank, he lived, in short, according to the custom of the country that
hospitably received him, and accorded him the more respect, because they
had been insulted by others.

He now introduced the _petits soupers_, which have never been understood
anywhere so well as in France, and which are even there dying out to
make way for the less social and more expensive dinner; but, perhaps, he
would even here have been unsuccessful, had it not been for the society
and advice of the famous St. Evremond, who at this time was exiled in
France, and took refuge in England.

This celebrated and accomplished man had some points of resemblance with