With his public capacity, however, we have not here to do:  it is in his character of a courtier that we view him following the queen and king.  His round, complacent face, with his small glistening eyes, arched eyebrows, and with a mouth ready to break out aloud into a laugh, are all subdued into a respectful gravity as he listens to King George grumbling at the necessity for his return home.  No English cook could dress a dinner; no English cook could select a dessert; no English coachman could drive; nor English jockey ride; no Englishman—­such were his habitual taunts—­knew how to come into a room; no Englishwoman understood how to dress herself.  The men, he said, talked of nothing but their dull politics, and the women of nothing but their ugly clothes.  Whereas, in Hanover, all these things were at perfection:  men were patterns of politeness and gallantry; women, of beauty, wit, and entertainment.  His troops there were the bravest in the world; his manufacturers the most ingenious; his people the happiest:  in Hanover, in short, plenty reigned, riches flowed, arts flourished, magnificence abounded, everything was in abundance that could make a prince great, or a people blessed.

There was one standing behind the queen who listened to these outbreaks of the king’s bilious temper, as he called it, with an apparently respectful solicitude, but with the deepest disgust in his heart.  A slender, elegant figure, in a court suit, faultlessly and carefully perfect in that costume, stands behind the queen’s chair.  It is Lord Hervey.  His lofty forehead, his features, which have a refinement of character, his well-turned mouth, and full and dimpled chin, form his claims to that beauty which won the heart of the lovely Mary Lepel; whilst the somewhat thoughtful and pensive expression of his physiognomy, when in repose, indicated the sympathising, yet, at the same time, satirical character of one who won the affections, perhaps unconsciously, of the amiable Princess Caroline, the favourite daughter of George II.

A general air of languor, ill concealed by the most studied artifice of countenance, and even of posture, characterizes Lord Hervey.  He would have abhorred robustness; for he belonged to the clique then called Maccaronis; a set of fine gentlemen, of whom the present world would not be worthy, tricked out for show, fitted only to drive out fading majesty in a stage coach; exquisite in every personal appendage, too fine for the common usages of society; point-device, not only in every curl and ruffle, but in every attitude and step; men with full satin roses on their shining shoes; diamond tablet rings on their forefingers; with snuff-boxes, the worth of which might almost purchase a farm; lace worked by the delicate fingers of some religious recluse of an ancestress, and taken from an altar-cloth; old point-lace, dark as coffee-water could make it; with embroidered waistcoats, wreathed in exquisite tambour-work round each capricious lappet