knew and were well acquainted, or thought they were, with the characters of their personages. I did not at ten years old penetrate characters; and as George I. died at the period where my Reminiscence begins, and was rather a good sort of man than a shining king; and as the duchess of Kendal was no genius, I heard very little of either when he and her power were no more. In fact, the reign of George I. was little more than the proem to the history of England under the house of Brunswic. That family was established here by surmounting a rebellion; to which settlement perhaps the phrensy of the South Sea scheme contributed, by diverting the national attention from the game of faction to the delirium of stock-jobbing; and even faction was split into fractions by the quarrel between the king and the heir apparent-another interlude which authorises me to call the reign of George I. a proem to the history of the reigning house of Brunswic, so successively agitated by parallel feuds.

Commençons.

As my first hero was going off the stage before I ought to have come upon it, it will be necessary to tell you, why the said two personages happened to meet just two nights before they were to part for ever; a rencounter that barely enables me to give you a general idea of the former's person and of his mistress's-or, as has been supposed, his wife's.

As I was the youngest by eleven years of sir Robert Walpole's children by his first wife, and was extremely weak and delicate, as you see me

still, though with no constitutional complaint till I had the gout after forty; and as my two sisters were consumptive and died of consumptions; the supposed necessary care of me (and I have overheard persons saying, "That child cannot possibly live") so engrossed the attention of my mother, that compassion and tenderness soon became extreme fondness and as the infinite good nature of my father never thwarted any of his children, he suffered me to be too much indulged, and permitted her to gratify the first vehement inclination that ever I expressed, and which, as I have never since felt any enthusiasm for royal persons, I must suppose that the female attendants in the family must have put into my head, to long to see the king. This childish caprice was so strong, that my mother solicited the duchess of Kendal to obtain for me the honour of kissing his majesty's hand before he set out for Hanover.-A favour so unusual to be asked for a boy of ten years old, was still too slight to be refused to the wife of the first minister for her darling child: yet not being proper to be made a precedent, it was settled to be in private and at night.

Accordingly, the night but one before the king began his last journey, my mother carried me at ten at night to the apartment of the countess of Walsingham †, on the ground-floor towards the garden at St. James's, which opened into that of her aunt the duchess of Kendal : apartments occu

* Katherine Walpole, and Mary viscountess Malpas. † Melusina Schulemberg, niece of the duchess of Kendal, created countess of Walsingham, and afterwards married to the famous Philip Stanhope, earl of Chesterfield.

pied by George II. after his queen's death, and by his successive mistresses, the countesses of Suffolk and Yarmouth.

Notice being given that the king was come down to supper, lady Walsingham took me alone into the duchess's ante-room, where we found alone the king and her. I knelt down, and kissed his hand. He said a few words to me, and my conductress led me back to my mother.

The person of the king is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him but yesterday. It was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his pictures and coins; not tall, of an aspect rather good than august, with a dark tie wig, a plain coat, waistcoat, and breeches of snuff-coloured cloth, with stockings of the same colour, and a blue riband over all. So entirely was he my object, that I do not believe I once looked at the duchess; but as I could not avoid seeing her on entering the room, I remember that just beyond his majesty stood a very tall, lean, ill-favoured old lady; but I did not retain the least idea of her features, nor know what the colour of her dress was.

My childish loyalty, and the condescension in gratifying it, were, I suppose, causes that contributed very soon afterwards to make me shed a flood of tears for that sovereign's death, when with the other scholars at Eton college I walked in procession to the proclamation of the successor; and which (though I think they partly fell because I imagined it became the son of a prime-minister to be more concerned than other boys), were no doubt imputed by many of the spectators who were poli

ticians, to my fears of my father's most probable fall, but of which I had not the smallest conception; nor should have met with any more concern than I did when it really arrived in the year 1742, by which time I had lost all taste for courts and princes and power, as was natural to one who never felt an ambitious thought for himself.

It must not be inferred from her obtaining this grace for me, that the duchess of Kendal was a friend to my father. On the contrary, at that moment she had been labouring to displace him, and introduce lord Bolinbroke* into the administration; on which I shall say more hereafter.

It was an instance of sir Robert's singular fortune, or evidence of his talents, that he not only preserved his power under two successive monarchs, but in spite of the efforts of both their mistresses † to remove him. It was perhaps still more remarkable, and an instance unparalleled, that sir Robert governed George the first in Latin, the king not speaking English‡, and his minister no German, nor even French. It was much talked of, that sir

* The well-known Henry St. John, viscount Bolinbroke, secretary of state to queen Anne, on whose death he fled and was attainted.

The duchess of Kendal and lady Suffolk.

Prince William (afterwards duke of Cumberland), then a child, being carried to his grandfather on his birth-day, the king asked him at what hour he rose. The prince replied," when the chimney-sweepers went about." "Vat is de chimney-sweeper?" said the king. "Have you been so long in England," said the boy, "and do not know what a chimney-sweeper is? Why, they are like that man there" -pointing to lord Finch, afterwards earl of Winchelsea

Robert, detecting one of the Hanoverian ministers in some trick or falsehood before the king's face, had the firmness to say to the German, "Mentiris, impudentissime!"-The good-humoured monarch only laughed, as he often did when sir Robert complained to him of his Hanoverians selling places, nor would be persuaded that it was not the practice of the English court; and which an incident must have planted in his mind with no favourable impression of English disinterestedness. "This is a strange country!" said his majesty: "the first morning after my arrival at St. James's, I looked out of the window, and saw a park with walks, a canal, &c. which they told me were mine. The next day lord Chetwynd, the ranger of my park, sent me a fine brace of carp out of my canal; and I was told I must give five guineas to lord Chetwynd's servant for bringing me my own carp out of my own canal in my own park!"

I have said that the duchess of Kendal was no friend of sir Robert, and wished to make lord Bolinbroke minister in his room. I was too young to know any thing of that reign, nor was acquainted with the political cabals of the court, which however I might have learnt from my father in the three years after his retirement; but being too thoughtless at that time, nor having your laudable curiosity, I neglected to inform myself of many passages

and Nottingham, of a family uncommonly swarthy and dark,

"the black funereal Finches-"

Sir Ch. Williams's Ode to a Number of Great Men, 1742.