THE TRAFFIC IN ORDERS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."
SgE,—In your issue of the 16th inst. appeared an admirable article under the heading "The Traffic in Orders." Permit me to endorse your objections to the acceptance of foreign decorations by English diplomatists, and officers, military or civil. I can assure you that as regards the first-named, their foreign colleagues viewed the absence of such marks of dis- tineticrn flinch in the same light as Talleyrand was impreseed bY Castlereagh's unbespangled bosom. The rule formerly obtaining has now been so transgressed that it will not be as
easy as you seem to think to revert to the old order of things I nor must it be forgotten that even during the reign of Queen Victoria a number of foreign decorations—chiefly Danish ones—were accepted and worn at Marlborough House by members of the household, and therein lay the thin edge of
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