’When Wharton’s just, and learns to pay his debts,
And reputation dwells at Mother Brett’s,

* * * * *

Then, Celia, shall my constant passion cease,
And my poor suff’ring heart shall be at peace,’

says a satirical poem of the day, called ’The Duke of Wharton’s Whens’—­was faithless to the wife he had lately been dying for; and in short, such a thorough blackguard, that not even the Jacobites could tolerate him, and they turned him out of the Holy City till he should learn not to bring dishonour on the court of their fictitious sovereign.

The duke was not the man to be much ashamed of himself, though his poor wife may now have begun to think her late mistress in the right, and he was probably glad of an excuse for another change.  At this time, 1727, the Spaniards were determined to wrest Gibraltar from its English defenders, and were sending thither a powerful army under the command of Los Torres.  The Duke had tried many trades with more or less success, and now thought that a little military glory would tack on well to his highly honourable biography.  At any rate there was novelty in the din of war, and for novelty he would go anywhere.  It mattered little that he should fight against his own king and own countrymen:  he was not half blackguard enough yet, he may have thought; he had played traitor for some time, he would now play rebel outright—­the game was worth the candle.

So what does my lord duke do but write a letter (like the Chinese behind their mud-walls, he was always bold enough when well secured under the protection of the post, and was more absurd in ink even than in action) to the King of Spain, offering him his services as a volunteer against ‘Gib.’  Whether his Most Catholic Majesty thought him a traitor, a madman, or a devoted partisan of his own, does not appear, for without waiting for an answer—­waiting was always too dull work for Wharton—­he and his wife set off for the camp before Gibraltar, introduced themselves to the Conde in Command, were received with all the honour—­let us say honours—­due to a duke—­and established themselves comfortably in the ranks of the enemy of England.  But all the duke’s hopes of prowess were blighted.  He had good opportunities.  The Conde de los Torres made him his aide-de-camp, and sent him daily into the trenches to see how matters went on.  When a defence of a certain Spanish outwork was resolved upon, the duke, from his rank, was chosen for the command.  Yet in the trenches he got no worse wound than a slight one on the foot from a splinter of a shell, and this he afterwards made an excuse for not fighting a duel with swords; and as to the outwork, the English abandoned the attack, so that there was no glory to be found in the defence.  He soon grew weary of such inglorious and rather dirty work as visiting trenches before a stronghold; and well he might; for if there be one thing duller than