the dignity of despotism; Lord Mansfield the reality yet the latter would have served the cause of power without sharing it: Pitt would have set the world free, if he might not command it. Lord Granville would have preferred doing right, if he had not thought it more convenient to do wrong. Sir Robert Walpole meaned to serve mankind, though he knew how little they deserved it; and this principle is at once the most meritorious in one's self and to the world.

HORACE WALPOLE.

THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE.

THE public opinion put him below his level; for though he had no superior parts or eminent talents, he had a most indefatigable industry, a perseverance, a court-craft, a servile compliance with the will of his sovereign for the time being, which qualities, with only a common share of common sense, will carry a man sooner and more safely through the dark labyrinth of a court than the most shining parts would do without those meaner talents. He was good natured to a degree of weakness, even to tears, upon the slightest occasions; exceedingly timorous, both personally and politically, dreading the least innovation, and keeping with a scrupulous timidity in the beaten track of business, as having the safest bottom.

I will mention one instance of this disposition, which, I think, will set it in the strongest light. When I brought the bill into the House of Lords for correcting and amending the calendar, I gave him previous notice of my intentions: he was

alarmed at so bold an undertaking, and conjured me not to stir matters that had been long quiet; adding, that he did not love new fangled things. I did not, however, yield to the cogency of these arguments, but brought in the bill, and it passed unanimously. From such weaknesses it necessarily follows that he could have no great ideas nor elevation of mind. His ruling, or rather his only passion was the agitation, the bustle, and the hurry of business, to which he had been accustomed above forty years: but he was as dilatory in despatching it as he was eager to engage in it. He was always in a hurry; never walked, but always ran, insomuch that I have sometimes told him, that by his fleetness one should rather take him for the courier than the author of the letters. He was as jealous of his power as an impotent lover of his mistress; without activity of mind enough to enjoy or exert it, but could not bear a share even in the appearances of it. His levees were his pleasure and his triumph; he loved to have them crowded, and, consequently, they were so there he made people of business wait two or three hours in the anti-chamber, while he trifled away that time with some insignificant favourites in his closet. When at last he came into his levee-room, he accosted, hugged, embraced, and promised every body with a seeming cordiality, but at the same time with an illiberal and degrading familiarity.

He was exceedingly disinterested, very profuse of his own fortune, and abhorring all those means too often used by persons in his station either to gratify their avarice or to supply their

prodigality; for he retired from business in one thousand seven hundred and sixty-two, above four hundred thousand pounds poorer than when he first engaged in it. Upon the whole, he was a compound of most human weaknesses, but untainted with any vice or crime.

CHESTERFIELD.

The duke of Newcastle was a man of whom no one ever spoke with cordial regard; of parts and conduct which generally drew animadversions bordering on contempt; of notorious insincerity, political cowardice, and servility to the highest and lowest. Yet, insincere without gall, ambitious without pride, luxurious, jovial, hospitable to all men; of an exorbitant estate, affable, forgetful of offences, and profuse of his favours indiscriminately to all his adherents; he had established a faction by far the most powerful in this country. Hence he derived that influence which encouraged his unworthy pretensions to ministerial power. Nor was he less indebted to a long experience of a court, a long practice in all its craft, whence he had acquired a certain art of imposition, that in every negotiation with the most distinguished popular leaders, however superior to himself in understanding, from the instant they began to depart from ingenuous and public principles, he never missed his advantage, nor failed of making them his property at last, and himself their master.

GLOVER.

LORD MELCOMBE.

IN the summer of this year, being now an exsecretary of an ex-statesman, I went to Eastbury, the seat of Mr. Dodington, in Dorsetshire, and passed the whole time of his stay in that place. Lord Halifax, with his brother-in-law Colonel Johnston, of the blues, paid a visit there, and the Countess Dowager of Stafford and old Lady Hervey were resident with us the whole time. Our splendid host was excelled by no man in doing the honours of his house and table; to the ladies he had all the courtly and profound devotion of a Spaniard, with the ease and gaiety of a Frenchman towards the men. His mansion was magnificent, massy, and stretching out to a great extent of front, with an enormous portico of Doric columns, ascended by a stately flight of steps; there were turrets and wings that went I know not whither, though now they are levelled with the ground, and gone to more ignoble uses : Vanbrugh, who constructed this superb edifice, seemed to have had the plan of Blenheim in his thoughts, and the interior was as proud and splendid as the exterior was bold and imposing. All this was exactly in unison with the taste of its magnificent owner, who had gilt and furnished the apartments with a profusion of finery, that kept no terms with simplicity, and not always with elegance or harmony of style. Whatever Mr. Dodington's revenue then was, he had the happy art of managing it with that regularity

and economy, that I believe he made more display at less cost than any man in the kingdom but himself could have done. His town house in Pall Mall, his villa at Hammersmith, and the mansion above described, were such establishments as few nobles in the nation were possessed of. In either of these he was not to be approached but through a suite of apartments, and rarely seated but under painted ceilings and gilt entablatures. In his villa you were conducted through two rows of antique marble statues, ranged in a gallery floored with the rarest marbles, and enriched with columns of granite and lapis lazuli; his saloon was hung with the finest Gobelin tapestry, and he slept in a bed encanopied with peacock's feathers in the style of Mrs. Montague. When he passed from Pall Mall to La Trappe it was always in a coach, which I could suspect had been his ambassadorial equipage at Madrid, drawn by six fat unwieldy black horses, short docked, and of colossal dignity: neither was he less characteristic in apparel than in equipage; he had a wardrobe loaded with rich and flaring suits, each in itself a load to the wearer, and of these I have no doubt but many were coeval with his embassy above mentioned, and every birthday added to the stock. In doing this he so contrived as never to put his old dress out of countenance by any variations in the fashions of the new; in the meantime his bulk and corpulency gave full display to a vast expanse and profusion of brocade and embroidery, and this, when set off with an enormous tieperriwig and deep laced ruffles, gave the picture