this small band of little people who have gained
name and fame. At eight years old he was
only eighteen inches high, and was taken into
the suite of the Duke of Buckingham. When
Charles the First and Queen Henrietta Maria
were, on one occasion (which has become tiresome
from being perpetually cited), entertained
by the duke, Jeffery Hudson was served up
in a cold pie, fully armed and accoutred. The
queen was so delighted with the tiny creature
that she begged him of the duke, and Jeffery
forthwith entered the royal suite. As he grew up he
displayed much tact, and was employed in many
delicate missions abroad and at home. During
a masque at court the palace porter, a gigantic
fellow, took Jeffery out of his pocket. He could
bear jokes of this kind prepared for set
occasions, but he was much irritated by the mocking
raillery of the courtiers. While on a foreign
mission, Hudson was so maddened by an insult
of this kind that he challenged the offender;
the courtier appeared, armed with a squirt;
Hudson insisted that the affair should not end
with this additional insult; they met with pistols,
and Hudson shot him dead on the spot. The
little man (who was eighteen inches high at
thirty years old, and then grew till he was forty-
five) lived to be involved in suspicion concerning
a Popish plot, and died in prison a little
while before the death of Charles the Second.
Some years ago his slashed and bedizened satin
doublet and hose were in the Ashmolean
Museum at Oxford. Are they there still?

Another political dwarf, if we may so
designate him, died only a few years ago.
Galignani noticed the event in eighteen hundred and
fifty-eight. The dwarf's name was Richebourg.
He was only twenty-four inches high. When
young he was in the service of the Duchess of
Orleans, wife of the duke in the days of the
French Revolution, and mother of the duke who
was afterwards King Louis Philippe. In the
desperate troubles of those days Richebourg
was, on one occasion, dressed up as a baby, and
carried in a nurse's arms, with important
despatches concealed in his baby-cap. One would
like to know more of this little fellow. That
the Orleans family pensioned him off with three
thousand francs per annum, and that he died
in the Rue du Four St. Germain at the venerable
age of ninety, are the only additional facts
mentioned; but it would be pleasant to know
how the manœuvre succeeded, and whether the
tiny diplomatist poked his small person into any
other of the momentous events of those times.

There was a little couple in the time of
Charles the Second, who compensated for
shortness of stature by length of days. They were
Richard and Anne Gibson. Richard had been
miniature-painter to Charles the First, and was
also installed into the office and dignity of court
dwarf. Anne was, at the same time, court
dwarf to Queen Henrietta Maria. The king
determined that the little people should be man
and wife. It was done, and he gave away the
bride. Waller, the court poet, celebrated the
nuptials in the following lines:

Design or chance make others wive,
But Nature did this match contrive;
Eve might as well have Adam fled,
As she denied her little bed
To him, for Heaven seemed to frame
And measure out this little dame!

To him the fairest nymphs do show,
Like moving mountains topp'd with snow;
And ev'ry man a Polypheme
Does to his Galatea seem!

The little people had a remarkably happy life
of it—if not absolutely "healthy and wealthy
and wise," at least, something like it. They
had nine children, five of whom lived to be men
and women, of the ordinary height. Richard,
born during the reign of James the First, saw
the glories and the troubles of Charles the First,
Cromwell, Charles the Second, and James the
Second, and died early in the reign of William
and Mary. Rather late in life he became drawing-
master to the Princesses Mary and Anne,
afterwards queens. He died at the age of
seventy-five, while his pocket-edition of a wife
survived to eighty-nine. They were each under
four feet in height; it is even said that they could
only muster seven feet of stature between them.

Peter the Great, who had something of the
Russian bear in his disposition, on one occasion
made merry with all the dwarfs living within a
certain range of his capital. He collected
seventy of them, and caused one horse to draw
a dozen of them at a time in a carriage, to raise
a laugh at their smallness. He ordered a
marriage between two of the number. All the
guests were served with small articles of food,
small tables, small knives and spoons. The
bridegroom, thirty- eight inches high, danced
a minuet, and the Czar was delighted. It is
related that, when the guests were about to take
their seats at the banquet, they quarrelled for
precedence, and maintained their individual
dignity, as warmly as people of larger growth.

Poland and Russia have been rather celebrated
for dwarfs. Porter noticed the fact in the last
century. In his Travels in Russia and Sweden,
he said: "Dwarfs are here the pages and play-
things of the great, and, at almost all entertainments,
stand for hours by their master's chair,
holding his snuff-box, or awaiting his commands.
There is scarcely a nobleman in this country
who is not possessed of one or more of these
freaks of nature. These little beings are
generally the gayest dressed persons in the service
of their lord, and are attired in a uniform or
livery of very costly materials. In the presence
of their owner their usual station is at his
elbow, in the character of a page; and, during
his absence, they are responsible for the cleanliness
and combed locks of their companions of
the canine species. . . . They are generally
well-shaped, and their hands and feet
particularly graceful. Indeed, in the proportion of
their figures, we should never discover them to
be flaws in the economy of nature, were it not
for a certain peculiarity of features, and the
size of the head, which is commonly exceedingly