would have practised: "You need not be so vain," said the old profligate," for you are not the king's daughter, but colonel Graham's." Graham was a fashionable man of those days, and noted for dry humour. His legitimate daughter, the countess of Berkshire, was extremely like to the duchess of Buckingham: "Well! well!" said Graham, "kings are all-powerful, and one must not complain; but certainly the same man begot those two women.' To discredit the wit of both parents, the duchess never ceased labouring to restore the house of Stuart, and to mark her filial devotion to it. Frequent were her journeys to the continent for that purpose. She always stopped at Paris, visited the church where lay the unburied body of James, and wept over it. A poor Benedictine of the convent, observing her filial piety, took notice to her grace that the velvet pall that covered the coffin was become thread-bare-and so it remained!

Finding all her efforts fruitless, and perhaps aware that her plots were not undiscovered by sir Robert Walpole, who was remarkable for his intelligence, she made an artful double, and resolved to try what might be done through him himself. I forget how she contracted an acquaintance with him-I do remember, that more than once he received letters from the Pretender himself, which probably were transmitted through her. Sir Robert always carried them to George II. who endorsed and returned them. That negotiation not succeeding, the duchess made a more home push. Learning his extreme fondness for his daughter (afterwards lady Mary Churchill), she sent for sir Roert, and asked him if he recollected what had not

been thought too great a reward to lord Clarendon for restoring the royal family? He affected not to understand her Was not he allowed," urged the zealous duchess, " to match his daughter to the duke of York?" Sir Robert smiled, and left her.

Sir Robert being forced from court, the duchess thought the moment * favourable, and took a new journey to Rome; but conscious of the danger she might run of discovery, she made over her estate to the famous Mr. Pulteney (afterwards earl of Bath), and left the deed in his custody. What was her astonishment, when on her return she re-demanded the instrument. It was mislaid-He could not find it-He never could find it! The duchess grew clamorous. At last his friend lord Mansfield told him plainly, he could never show his face unless he satisfied the duchess. Lord Bath did then sign a release to her of her estate. The transaction was recorded in print by sir Charles Hanbury Williams in a pamphlet that had great vogue, called A Congratulatory Letter, with many other anecdotes of the same personage, and was not less acute than sir Charles's Odes on the same hero. The duchess dying not long after sir Robert's entrance into the house of lords, lord Oxford, one of her executors, told him there, that the duchess had struck lord Bath out of her will, and made him, sir Robert,

* I am not quite certain that, writing by memory at the distance of fifty years, I place that journey exactly at the right period, nor whether it did not take place before sir Robert's fall. Nothing material depends on the precise period.

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one of her trustees in his room. "Then," said sir Robert laughing, "I see, my lord, that I have got lord Bath's place before he has got mine." Sir Robert had artfully prevented the last. Before he quitted the king, he persuaded his majesty to insist, as a preliminary to the change, that Mr. Pulteney should go into the house of peers, his great credit lying in the other house; and I remember my father's action when he returned from court and told me what he had done-" I have turned the key of the closet on him"-making that motion with his haud. Pulteney had jumped at the proffered earldom, but saw his error when too late; and was so enraged at his own oversight, that, when he went to take the oaths in the house of lords, he dashed his patent on the floor, and vowed he would never take it up-But he had kissed the king's hand for it, and it was too late to recede.

But though madam of Buckingham could not effect a coronation to her will, she indulged her pompous mind with such puppet-shows as were appropriate to her rank. She had made a funeral for her husband as splendid as that of the great Marlborough she renewed that pageant for her only son, a weak lad, who died under age; and for herself; and prepared and decorated waxen dolls of him and of herself to be exhibited in glass-cases in Westminster-abbey. It was for the procession at her son's burial that she wrote to old Sarah of Marlborough to borrow the triumphal car that had transported the corpse of the duke. "It carried my lord Marlborough," replied the other," and shall never be used for any body else."

"I have

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consulted the undertaker," replied the Buckingham, "and he tells me I may have a finer for twenty pounds."

One of the last acts of Buckingham's life was marrying a grandson she had to a daughter of lord Hervey. That intriguing man, sore, as I have said, at his disgrace, cast his eyes every where to revenge or exalt himself. Professions or recantations of any principles cost him nothing at least the consecrated day which was appointed for his first interview with the duchess made it presumed, that to obtain her wealth, with her grandson for his daughter, he must have sworn fealty to the house of Stuart. It was on the martyrdom of her grandfather she received him in the great drawingroom of Buckingham-house, seated in a chair of state, in deep mourning, attended by her women in like weeds, in memory of the royal martyr.

It will be a proper close to the history of those curious ladies to mention the anecdote of Pope relative to them. Having drawn his famous character of Atossa, he communicated it to each duchess, pretending it was levelled at the other. The Buckingham believed him the Marlborough had more sense, and knew herself-and gave him a thousand pounds to suppress it- -And yet he left the copy behind him!

Bishop Burnet, from absence of mind, had drawn as strong a picture of herself to the duchess of Marlborough, as Pope did under covert of another lady. Dining with the duchess after the duke's disgrace, Burnet was comparing him to Belisarius -"But how," said she, "could so great a general

be so abandoned?"-" Oh! madam," said the bishop," do not you know what a brimstone of a wife he had?"

Perhaps you know this anecdote, and perhaps several others that I have been relating-No matter-they will go under the article of my dotage and very properly-I began with tales of my nursery and prove that I have been writing in my second childhood.

January 13th, 1789.

END OF THE REMINISCENCES.