she said disagreeable ones behind their backs. She had as many enemies as acquaintances, for nobody knew without disliking her." Lord Hervey was very ill with her: she had first used him ill, to flatter her brother, which of course had made him not use her very well; and the preference on every occasion he gave her sister, the Princess Caroline, completed their mutual dislike. Princess Caroline had affability without meanness, dignity without pride, cheerfulness without levity, and prudence without falsehood.16 The Queen kept the King's birthday in London, but came from Kensington only that morning, and returned thither after the ball at night. There was a very thin appearance, and as little finery as if the same sumptuary law forbidding gold and silver, that subsists at this time in the Court of Spain, was in force here. Sir Robert Walpole went the day after the birthday as usual into Norfolk for three weeks, the Duke of Devonshire to Newmarket, the Duke of Grafton and Lord Lifford to fox hunt in Suffolk, and nobody being left but the Duke of Newcastle at Court, the Queen desired Lord Hervey, who was to have gone into Suffolk for a fortnight to his father, to make his excuse, to say she had absolutely forbid him to leave her, and not to stir from Kensington. Accordingly he did so, and was with her Majesty not only every day, but almost all the day, talking over in different con 16 These two characters of the Princesses are on a separate paper, and probably filled a portion of the chasm in page 195; but as the connecting words are lost, I have placed them here in conjunction with the nearest mention of their names. versations a thousand particulars relating to the subjects I have here treated in short and thrown together in a loose way, that I might not, by a more accurate manner of ranging them, deviate from the manner in which these conversations passed. And as I look upon these papers rather as fragments that might be wove into a history, than a history in themselves, so I generally put down such little particulars as can come to the knowledge of few historians; whilst I omit several which may be learned from every Gazette, and cannot fail to be inserted in the writings every author who will treat of these times. of I am very sensible too what mere trifles several things are in themselves which I have related; but as I know that I myself have had a pleasure in looking at William Rufus's rusty stirrup, and the relics of a half worm-eaten chair in which Queen Mary sat when she was married in the Cathedral of Winchester to King Philip of Spain, it is for the sake of those who, like me, have an unaccountable pleasure in such trifling particulars relating to antiquity, that I take the trouble of putting many of the immaterial incidents I have described, into black and white, and am very ready to give up the dignity of my character as an historian to the censures of those who may be pleased on this account to reflect upon it; let them enjoy their great reflections on great events unenvied, and seek them elsewhere; and let those only hope for any satisfaction or amusement in my writings, who look with more indifferent eyes on the surface of those splendid trifles, and pry less metaphysically into the bottom of them, for it is to those only I write, who prefer nature to gilding, truth to refinement, and have more pleasure in looking upon these great actors dressing and undressing, than when they are representing their parts upon the public stage. Let Machiavels give rules for the conduct of princes, and let Tacituses refine upon them; let the one embellish their writings with teaching, and the other with commenting on these great personages; let these make people imagine that lettered theory can be reduced to common practice, and let those pretend to account for accidental steps by premeditated policy, whilst I content myself with only relating facts just as I see them, without pretending to impute the effects of chance to design, or to account for the great actions of great people always by great causes; since the highest rank of people have as many and the same passions as the lowest; and since the lowest have five senses, and none of the highest that I know of have six. I look upon the world, and every incident in it, to be produced as much from the same manner of thinking, as I do the operations of kitchen-jacks and the finest repeating watches from the same laws of motion and the same rules of mechanism-the only difference is a little coarser or finer wheels. The intrigues of Courts and private families are still the same game, and played with the same cards, the disparity in the skill of the gamesters in each equally great; there are excellently good and execrably bad, and the only difference is their playing more or less deep, whilst the cutting and shuffling, the dealing and the playing is still the same, whether the stakes be halfpence or millions. CHAPTER XXVII. The King announces his return-The Queen's altered feelings-The King supposed to be in danger at sea-] -Indecent conduct of the Prince-The Queen's anxieties-Lord Hervey's speculations on the King's loss-The King at sea, but driven back by a great storm-The Prince affects popularity-His conversation with Walpole-The King returns. BUT to return to my narrative from the impertinence of these reflections. The long-deferred, not much expected and less wished-for orders of his Majesty for the yachts to set out for Holland, at last arrived. The Queen gave these orders this year a very different welcome from that with which she received them the last; last year she felt a sort of triumph in his return, when all the enemies of the Court had flattered themselves he would then defer his return in the same manner he had done now; the Queen too had flattered herself that he would come back from this gallantry as he had done from former excursions of the same sort, and that in returning to her presence he would return to her arms and his former conjugal attachments; but as she had found herself so terribly deceived in these hopes and expectations the last year, and had so much less reason to form them this, she had nothing before her eyes for this winter but the revolution of the coldness she had felt the last; she considered this return only as a transition from the ease and liberty in which she had passed the summer, to an uninterrupted scene of disquiet and constraint; and knew the change for which she was to prepare was, from receiving homage to paying it, and that she was to quit the company of those who were perpetually endeavouring, and with success, to please her, for the company of one whom she should be constantly endeavouring to please, and without success. Between the 7th and 8th of December, in the night, after a great ball and a great supper, the King set out from Hanover, and arrived Friday the 11th at Helvoetsluys. The Princess Royal four days before, after a terrible labour and being in great danger of her life, had been brought to bed at the Hague of a daughter, which Dr. Sands, a very eminent man-midwife sent from hence by the Queen, had been obliged to squeeze to death in the birth, to save the mother. These circumstances did not, after all his former affection professed for his dear daughter Ann, awaken paternal love sufficient in his Majesty to engage him to make any visit at the Hague. He could say to Madame Walmoden, like Sappho to Phaon, all other loves are lost in thine.1 The next Tuesday [the 14th], after he came to Helvoetsluys, whilst the people in England were employed in nothing but looking at weathercocks, and talking of tides and winds and moons, the wind changed on this side of the water for about eight or nine hours to the east, and everybody of course concluded his Majesty at sea: on Tuesday night it changed again, and a violent storm arose, which lasted four days, during which time there 1 Pope's translation of Ovid's |