Page:Republican Court by Rufus Griswold.djvu/382

Mr. and Mrs. Van Berckel, Mr. and Mrs. Randolph, Mr. and Mrs Wolcott, Mr. and Mrs. Pinckney, and Mr. and Mrs. Coxe. Madame Frere and Madame Jaudennes were brilliant witli diamonds." The Chevalier Frere was the Portuguese minister, and his wife became very intimate with Mrs. Washington and Miss Custis. Jaudennes was minister from Spain.

In June, 1796, Don Carlos Martinez, Marquis d'Yrujo, succeeded Jaudennes as Spanish minister. On his arrival in this country the President was at Mount Vernon, and there the Marquis paid him a visit. On the fourth of July Washington writes to Pickering, "M. d'Yrujo spent two days with me, and is just gone. I caused it to be intimated to him that, as I should be absent from the seat of government until the middle or latter end of August, I was ready to receive his letter of credentials at this place. He answered, as I understood it, that his credentials were with his baggage on its passage to Philadelphia, and that his reception at that place, at the time mentioned, would be perfectly agreeable to himself. He is a young man, very free and easy in his manners, professes to be well disposed towards the United States, and as far as a judgment can be formed on so slight an acquaintance, appears to be well informed." He married Sally McKean, a daughter of the Chief Justice of Pennsylvania. She was considered a great beauty. D'Yrujo was afterward conspicuous in Spanish affairs, and his son, the Duke of Sotomayer, born in Philadelphia, became Prime Minister. Philadelphia furnished wives for the envoys of France, England and Spain, during Washington's administration, and a large number of foreign ministers have since been married to American women.

Volney, the infidel traveller and essayist, with the littleness, malice, and insolence which have almost invariably marked the class of thinkers to which he belonged, inflated by what he calls the "splendid success" of his book on the East, and continually