in observing to the King how prejudicial it would be to his affairs to prefer to the minister in possession a man in whose own judgment his predecessor was the fittest person to execute his office.  From that moment there was no more question of Sir Spencer Compton as prime-minister.  He was created an earl, soon received the garter, and became president of that council, at the head of which he was much fitter to sit than to direct.  Fourteen years afterwards, he was again nominated by the same Prince to replace Sir Robert as first lord of the treasury on the latter’s forced resignation, but not -.is prime-minister; the conduct of affairs being soon ravished from him by that dashing genius the Earl of Granville, who reduced him to a cipher for the little year in which he survived, and in which his incapacity had been obvious.

The Queen, impatient to destroy all hopes of change, took the earliest opportunity of declaring her own sentiments.  The instance I shall cite will be a true picture of courtiers.  Their Majesties had removed from Richmond to their temporary palace in Leicester-fields(100)on the very evening of their receiving notice of their accession to the Crown, and the next day all the nobility and gentry in town crowded to kiss their hands; my mother amongst the rest, who, Sir Spencer Compton’s designation, and not its evaporation, being known, could not make her way between the scornful backs and elbows of her late devotees, nor could approach nearer to the Queen than the third or fourth row; but no sooner was she descried by her Majesty than the Queen said aloud, “There, I am sure, I see a friend!” The torrent divided and shrunk to either side; “and as I came away,” said my mother, “I might have walked over their heads if I had pleased.”

The preoccupation of the Queen in favour of Walpole must be explained.  He had early discovered that, in whatever gallantries George Prince of Wales indulged or affected, even the person of his Princess was dearer to him than any charms in his mistresses; and though Mrs. Howard (afterwards Lady Suffolk) was openly his declared favourite, as avowedly as the Duchess of Kendal was his father’s, Sir Robert’s sagacity discerned that the power would be lodged with the wife, not with the mistress; and he not only devoted himself to the Princess; but totally abstained from even visiting Mrs. Howard; while the injudicious multitude concluded. that the common consequences of an inconstant husband’s passion ’for his concubine would follow, and accordingly warmer, if not public vows were made to the supposed favourite, than to the Prince’s consort.  They, especially, who in the late reign had been out of favour at court, had, to pave their future path to favour, and to secure the fall of Sir Robert Walpole, sedulously, and no doubt zealously, dedicated themselves to the mistress:  Bolingbroke secretly, his friend Swift openly, and as ambitiously, cultivated Mrs. Howard; and the neighbourhood of Pope’s