were not put to very great exertions for the vehicles of the day could not manage more than five or six miles an hour, so that it was not a great matter for the runners to keep a little distance ahead. Their chief duties included pointing out to the coachman the proper turning to take, and making arrangements for the various halts on the road besides helping with the pole on occasions. As accommodation on the high roads improved, a great part of their duties became negligible, and towards the end of the century they were retained only to give an extra air of importance to those who paid them. They could run seven miles an hour or more, were certainly more for country than town use, and were especially required for the more lonely parts of Scotland and Ireland, where means of intercommunication were difficult and rare.

But they were also employed in town for messages requiring a speedy reply, and were very proud of their superior speed. In the Evening Post in December 1735, it is stated that Lady Molesworth's" racing " footman had a race with General Churchill's "from St. James's Street to Edgworth (sic) Gate ".

The running footman of the Duke of York (brother of Charles II.) was very celebrated for his fleetness of foot, and used to be backed by his Royal master to run races in Hyde Park. They were probably highly paid, for they were not a long-lived race and often died of consumption. One of the last to keep such a servant was "Old Q.", the Duke of Queensbury, better known in the annals of gallantry as Lord March, who died in 1810; but it is to be feared that the messages on which his runners were despatched (they were always in readiness at his door in Piccadilly) were chiefly concerned with his numerous affaires du cœur.

There is a signboard representing a "running footman still to be seen near Berkeley Square, over a public-house much frequented by the men-servants of the neighbourhood. Beneath is written "I am the only Running Footman". It may be a portrait of a celebrated member of the tribe or relate to the superior speed of the original. In this picture, the "drawers" are represented by tight-fitting knee-breeches tied with bows at the knee, and there is no sign of any kind of petticoat. Male servants coming up to London from the country sometimes telegraph here for accommodation or to communicate with friends: it is usual to write the address in full-"I am the Only Running Footman-London ", and it never fails to find. But to return to Teresa Cornelys, whose London career was so mixed up with the doings of the gay set to which my Lady Townshend belonged.

The whole life of this extraordinary woman, as well known in the chief cities of the Continent as she came to be in London, was one long drawn-out intrigue. When she settled in England, her past experiences in Venice and Vienna, the two most depraved cities of Europe, stood her in good stead, and a steady flow of visitors from other countries making the "grand tour", either old acquaintances of her own, or bringing letters of introduction, kept up a constant supply of new clients and new sources of gain for Carlisle House. Every visitor to London turned up sooner or later at the Soho Square meetingplace. Alessandro Verri, whose correspondence was edited by Casabe in 1879, alludes in a letter dated February 2, 1767, to "Il Ballo di Giovedi ad una magnifica sala di una Italiana, la Signora Pompeati (Thursday's ball in a magnificent hall belonging to an

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Italian, Madame Pompeati). His mention of her by her old name shows a previous acquaintance with her at either Bayreuth or Vienna.

The attractions provided were not always of the same exhilarating kind. When the Princess of Wales, mother of George III., died in 1772, Mrs. Harris describes a very odd sort of entertainment (if so it could be called) given at Carlisle House :

Madame Cornelys gave a most odd entertainment, a kind of funeral elegy on the death of the Princess Dowager of Wales. A large kind of frame was made round the glasses, and in various parts of the room, with lamps stuck in it, and black crape strained over the lamps to make the light solemn. At the upper end of the room was a black canopy under which was a white tomb with "Augusta " writ on it; on one side stood a man, on the other side a woman, who sang forth praises of the Princess. A most ridiculous whim of the woman's-window curtains all black, etc.

Absurd as all this may sound to our modern ears, it was quite in keeping in an age when enormous sums were always spent on the draping of houses and furniture with crape and other panoply of woe, whenever a death occurred in the family.

Thus for many years did the wicked old Venetian exploit for her own advantage the foibles and depravity of the eighteenth century. William Combe, the author

• In 1704, for example, at the funeral of Lady Mary Coke (not the lady of that name who was so celebrated for her friendship with Maria Theresa, but the daughter of an Earl of Chesterfield) the undertaker's account included £20 for putting the staircase and hall and two rooms in mourning for six months: £5 for pennons in common silk and 24s. for twelve escutcheons in buckram. How Mr. Mould would have enjoyed estimating for and conducting such a funeral! By the early years of the nineteenth century people had become more sensible; but even I can remember going to a funeral at which there were two mutes with long staves draped in crape standing at the door, and a voluminous garment like a brigand's cloak, together with a long-sweeping hatband, were served out to each gentleman mourner, but afterwards carefully collected by the undertaker.