presented in England, he was not eligible. The King begged that if we stayed another winter we would come to Court. Among his guests was the Archduke John of Austria. Of him a story was told in Tyrol, that he had shot an eagle, and when it was brought down he expressed his surprise that it had only one head, as the Austrian heraldic eagle had two.
Later, a droll incident occurred. When we were at Cologne, one morning, my father found that the wrong boots had been placed at his door. So my mother went forth, holding the boots with the chalked number on the soles, and finding what she thought was the bedroom of herself and my father, opened the door and threw them in, exclaiming, "Here, Edward! here are your boots!" To her dismay she saw the Archduke John, half-dressed before his looking-glass, shaving. What was to be done? After a moment's hesitation, she reopened the door, saying, "Entschuldigen, Durchlaucht!" (Excuse me, Your Serene Highness!) picked up the boots and fled.
Afterwards meeting at breakfast in the Speisesaal, His Royal Highness laughingly referred to the incident, and looking at my beautiful mother said: "I only wish that I had been in Herr von Baring's shoes, and he in mine inspecting the gold-mines of Nagy Bánya." Nagy Bánya is in Transylvania.
My father looked glum. He was never alert in understanding a joke, a failing attributed by the Yankees to most Englishmen. They tell a story of how the music of heaven was once jarred by an outburst of laughter from a recently-arrived John Bull. When asked the cause of such unseasonable merriment, his reply was, "Oh, I have just found the point of a joke I heard five-and-twenty years ago."
The Archduke John-Baptist-Joseph-Fabian-Sebastian was born in 1782, and died in 1859. He was persistently "snubbed" by his eldest brother, the Emperor Francis, who disliked his frank and homely tastes. The Tyrolese were devoted to him, so the Emperor forbade his living in Tyrol for thirty years, from 1805 to 1835, when the Emperor died. Hormayr wrote of him as one of noble and generous nature, with a treasure of historical and military knowledge, an open mind, and a passionate love of nature and of art. John von Mliller wrote to Gentz in 1808: "The Court has in the most unpardonable manner scandalously
