think his sting formidable enough to extract it by so dear an operation how often since has Mr. Pelham wished him laid up in ermine! At the beginning of this Parliament, rejected by Westminster, and countenanced nowhere, he bought the loss of an election at Weobly, for which place, however, on a petition, Mr. Fox procured him to be returned by parliament, and had immediately the satisfaction of finding him declare against the court, declared a lord of the bedchamber to the prince, and, on the first occasion, the warmest antagonist of the Duke and the Mutiny Bill. On Lord Trentham's being opposed at Westminster last year, Lord Egmont tried, by every art and industry, to expiate his offences in the eyes of his old electors, and was the great engine of the contest there. All the morning he passed at the hustings; then came to the house, where he was a principal actor; and all the evening he passed at hazard; not to mention the hours he spent in collecting materials for his speeches, or in furnishing them to his weekly mercenaries. With this variety of life, he was as ignorant of the world as a child, and knew nothing of mankind, though he had acted every part in it.-Vol. I. Pp. 30-32.

The following is a notice made quite en passant of a person afterwards not a little famous-Lord Bute. It is the more curious, from its being made without attaching the least importance to the subject; and being consequently free from the bias, one way or the other, which must have guided the drawing a character of Lord Bute ten years later.

The Prince's court, composed of the refuse of every party, was divided into twenty small ones. Lord Egmont at the head of one, Nugent of another, consisting of himself and two more, Lady Middlesex and Doddington of a third, the chief ornament of which was the Earl of Bute, a Scotchman, who, having no estate, had passed his youth in studying mathematics and mechanics in his own little island, then simples in the hedges about Twickenham, and at five and thirty had fallen in love with his own figure, which he produced at masquerades in becoming dresses, and in plays which he acted in private companies with a set of his own relations. He became a personal

favourite of the Prince, and was so lucky just now as to give up a pension to be one of the lords of his bedchamber.-Pp. 40-41.

On the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, Walpole gives the following summing up of his character and conduct. It represents him in no very amiable light; but the Prince and his party appear to have been the chief objects of Walpole's ill-will. We doubt not, however, that in the main, the portraiture is just.

Thus died Frederick, Prince of Wales! having resembled his pattern the Black Prince in nothing but in dying before his father. Indeed it was not his fault if he had not distinguished himself by any warlike achievements. He had solicited the

command of the army in Scotland during the last rebellion; though that ambition was ascribed rather to his jealousy of his brother than to his courage. A hard judgment! for what he could he did! When the royal army lay before Carlisle, the Prince, at a great supper that he gave to his court and his favourites, as was his custom when the Princess laid in, had ordered for the dessert the representation of the citadel of Carlisle in paste, which he in person and the maids of honour bombarded with sugar-plumbs! He had disagreed with the King and Queen early after his coming to England; not entirely by his own fault. The King had refused to pay what debts he had left at Hanover; and it ran a little in the blood of the family to hate the eldest son; the Prince himself had so far not degenerated, though a better-natured man, and a much better father, as to be fondest of his second son, Prince Edward. The Queen had exerted more authority, joined to a narrow prying into his conduct, than he liked; and Princess Emily, who had been admitted into his greatest confidence, had not forfeited her duty to the Queen by concealing any of his secrets. that might do him prejudice. Lord Bolingbroke, who had sowed a division in the Pretender's court, by the scheme for the father's resigning his claim to the eldest boy, repeated the same plan of discord here, on the first notice of the Prince's disgusts; and the whole opposition was instructed to offer their services to the heir-apparent against the crown and the minister. The Prince was sensible to flattery, and had a sort of parts that

made him relish the sort of parts of Lord Chesterfield, Doddington, and Lyttelton, the latter of whom being introduced by Doddington, had wrought the disgrace of his protector. Whoever was unwelcome at St. James's, was sure of countenance at the Prince's apartments there. He was in vain reprimanded for this want of respect. At last, having hurried the Princess from Hampton Court, when she was in actual labour, to the imminent danger of her's and the child's life, without acquainting either King or Queen, the formal breach ensued; he having added to this insult, a total silence to his mother, on her arriving immediately to visit the Princess, and, while he led her to her coach; but as soon as he came in sight of the populace, he knelt down in the dirt and kissed her hand with the most respectful show of duty. He immediately went all lengths of opposition and popularity till the fall of Sir Robert Walpole, when he was reconciled to, though never after spoken to by, the King. On Lord Granville's disgrace, he again grew out of humour; but after having been betrayed and deserted by all he had obliged, he did not erect a new standard of opposition, till the Pelhams had bought off every man of any genius that might have promoted his views. Indeed, his attachment to his followers was not stronger than theirs to him. Being angry with Lord Doneraile, for not speaking oftener in the House of Commons, he said, "Does he think I will support him, unless he does as I would have him? Does not he consider that whoever are my ministers, I must be king?" His chief passion was women, but, like the rest of his race, beauty was not a necessary ingredient. Miss whom he had debauched without loving, and who had been debauched without loving him so well as either Lord Harrington or Lord Hervey, who both pretended to her first favours, had no other charms than of being a maid of honour, who was willing to cease to be so on the first opportunity. Of his favourites, Lady Archibald Hamilton had been neither young nor handsome within his memory. Lady Middlesex was very short, very plain, and very yellow: a vain girl, full of Greek and Latin, and music, and painting, but neither mischievous nor political. Lady Archibald was very agreeable and artful, but had lost his heart, by giving him William Pitt for a rival. But though these mistresses were pretty much declared, he was a good husband, and the quiet inoffensive good sense of the Princess (who had never said a foolish

thing, or done a disobliging one since her arrival, though in very difficult situations, young, uninstructed, and besieged by the Queen, Princess Emily, and Lady Archibald's creatures, and very jarring interests), was likely to have always preserved a chief ascendant over him. Gaming was another of his passions, but his style of play did him less honour than the amusement. He carried this dexterity* into practice in more essential commerce, and was vain of it! One day at Kensington, that he had just borrowed five thousand pounds from Doddington, seeing him pass under his window, he said to Hedges, his secretary, "That man is reckoned one of the most sensible men in England, yet, with all his parts, I have just nicked him out of five thousand pounds." He was really childish, affectedly a protector of arts and sciences; fond of displaying what he knew: a mimic, the Lord knows what a mimic! of the celebrated Duke of Orleans, in imitation of whom he wrote two or three silly, French songs. His best quality was generosity; his worst, insincerity, and indifference to truth, which appeared so early, that Earl Stanhope wrote to Lord Sunderland from Hanover, what I shall conclude his character with, "He has his father's head, and his mother's heart!"-Pp. 62-67.

The conduct of the King on this occasion seems to have shewn more feeling than was his wont, and wholly differs from the flippant account given of it by Sir Nathaniel Wraxall. The Duke of Cumberland, however, appears to have behaved with a cold-heartedness and want of feeling sufficient for the rest of the family. As Walpole was, at that time, one of his immediate adherents we may believe the representation to be correct.

The following parallel between Pitt and Fox is most curious. Walpole, however, it must be observed, was at that time the close ally of the latter.

*The following remarkable anecdote was told me by Mr. Fox, who said the King himself told it him, and that the late Lord Hervey had told him the same particular from the Queen.. One day when the Prince was but a boy, his governor was complaining of him: the Queen, whose way (as the King said) was to excuse him, said, "Ah! je m'imagine que ces sont des tours de page." The governor replied, "Plat à Dieu, madame, que ces fússent des tours de page! ces sont des tours de laquais et de coquins.”

Pitt was undoubtedly one of the greatest masters of ornamental eloquence. His language was amazingly fine and flowing; his voice admirable; his action most expressive; his figure genteel and commanding. Bitter satire was his fort: when he attempted ridicule, which was very seldom, he succeeded happily: when he attempted to reason, poorly. But where he chiefly shone, was in exposing his own conduct: having waded through the most notorious apostacy in politics, he treated it with an impudent confidence, that made all reflections upon him poor and spiritless, when worded by any other man. Out of the House of Commons he was far from being this shining character. His conversation was affected and unnatural, his manner not engaging, nor his talents adapted to a country, where ministers must court, if they would be courted.

Fox, with a great hesitation in his elocution, and a barrenness of expression, had conquered these impediments, and the prejudices they had raised against his speaking, by a vehemence of reasoning, and closeness of argument, that beat all the orators of the time. His spirit, his steadiness, and humanity, procured him strong attachments, which, the more jealous he grew of Pitt, the more he cultivated. Fox always spoke to the question; Pitt to the passions: Fox to carry the question: Pitt to raise himself: Fox pointed out, Pitt lashed the errors of his antagonists: Pitt's talents were likely to make him soonest, Fox to keep him first minister longest.—Pp. 79-81.

The following is spirited, and, from the son of Sir Robert Walpole, cannot be considered severe.

Lord Bath is so known a character, that it is almost needless to draw him. Who does not know that Mr. Pulteney was the great rival of Sir Robert Walpole, whose power he so long opposed, at last overturned, and was undone with it? Who does not know that his virtue failed the moment his inveteracy was gratified? Who does not know that all the patriot's private vices, which his party would not see while he led them, were exposed, and, if possible, magnified by them the instant he deserted them? Who does not know that he had not judgment or resolution enough to engross the power, which he had forfeited his credit and character to obtain? and