There is a passage in my brother's _Autobiography_ which grates upon my mind, and, I think, very signally fails to hit the mark.
He writes (vol.i.p.

28):--"She loved society, affecting a somewhat Liberal _role_, and professing an emotional dislike to tyrants, which sprung from the wrongs of would-be regicides and the poverty of patriot exiles.

An Italian marquis who had escaped with only a second shirt from the clutches of some archduke whom he had wished to exterminate, or a French _proletaire_ with distant ideas of sacrificing himself to the cause of liberty, were always welcome to the modest hospitality of her house.

In after years, when marquises of another caste had been gracious to her, she became a strong Tory, and thought that archduchesses were sweet.

But with her, politics were always an affair of the heart, as indeed were all her convictions.