truth means, not only the not telling what is false, but the not concealing what is true?

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Very like a good scholar of Fothergill," replied Lord Castleton; "but you are to mark that this applies only to history, and to those cases where to reveal a fact is a duty, not where to ask a thing may be an impertinence. As there can be no merit in bluntness, so there can be no harm in civility."

He then told me a bon mot of the king in regard to one of his colleagues, who was what is called a rough diamond, and, from the effect of his very honesty, the most unpopular of the cabinet. Lord Castleton, who respected him, said one day to the king (who had himself experienced his roughness), that it was a pity; for that if he were only commonly civil, his virtue was such, that he might do any thing: "Yes," answered the king, or if only commonly uncivil."

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One of the first things that struck me was, the nature and despotism of party. People who are only public men while they are reading the papers, or conversing sheerly upon measures as they appear to the world, have no sort of notion of the influence of this potent spell, which, like the spell of enchanters, controls nature itself. I own, with all my knowledge of history, I was one of these ignoramuses, and thought that the being a public man

* "Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat." VOL. III.

F

did not preclude a person from calling black, black, and white, white. I found I was mistaken, and that neither great virtue nor great fortune could exempt a man enrolled in party, any more than if he were enrolled in the army, from thinking, speaking, and looking as his commanding officers ordered him.

It was an obstinacy in a contrary opinion that drove Manners out of Parliament, for in this he was "ortus a quercu, non a salice."

My attention was first called to this, by a sort of dispute upon it, at Lord Castleton's table.

"With my castle in the north, and £15,000 ayear, who shall dare," said a young Hotspur, animating in the argument, "to prescribe how I shall vote. What can I care for ambition ?"

"More perhaps than you are aware of,” said an old politician, to whom he was addressing himself; "go, live a common-place life at your fine castle, and see what will come of it. See nobody but the little people of the neighbourhood, grow as rusty as they, and be ready to give your ears, though in vain, for such company as this. Depend upon it you will soon wish yourself back again.'

"But why may I not be, what a very virtuous nobleman was said to be, in his epitaph?—

"Courted by all parties,

Enlisted in none.' """*

* Henry, third Lord Lonsdale.

"Very good," said his cool Nestor ; " and if you enlist in none, you will be neglected by all."

"Why?"

"Because, great and wise as you may think yourself, and virtuous as you may intend to be, you will pass your life among the common herd, without power, and, therefore, without consequence."

Hotspur bit his lips, and said, rather than that should be, he would go back to Northumberland.

"And be the melancholy lord of it, as he is called in the play,"* said his antagonist.

The best of it was, that Hotspur, having actually fled to his northern fastness, to indulge his virtuous indignation, was so sickened with spleen, caused by inaction, that, unable to persuade himself, as at first he had resolved, to vacate his seat, he returned to St. Stephen's, and became ever after one of the hottest party men that ever blew the political trumpet.

Observations on these scenes and characters formed an inexhaustible source of both amusement and improvement, particularly when, after a few months, I no longer felt a fresh-man in London; and their effect upon me formed sometimes a diverting speculation for Lord Castleton himself, who said I was the most admirable touchstone, from

* Saw you the melancholy Lord Northumberland?

Richard III.

being totally unsophisticated, that since the days of Fothergill he had ever met with. He was, indeed, particularly interested in observing how by degrees the rust of my Oxford gown, as he called it, wore off, and how well I took to the training both of Lady Hungerford's saloon and of our own official commerce with men.

In the latter I grew so thoroughly imbued, that one would suppose I had been bred to it all my life. The very air of Downing-street, as it was different to all other atmospheres, so it seemed more wholesome and necessary to those who breathed it; so that I was not at all surprised that they who, from any accident, or revolution in politics, were deprived of it, never found themselves well afterwards. The effect, also, of this atmosphere was always visible in the countenance and manner of those who dwelt in it. It followed them into all other places; to court especially, and the houses of Parliament; so that you might easily perceive in what quarter of the town they dwelt, by their complacency; while those who never had been there, but particularly if they had been and were expelled, shewed all the symptoms of a change for the worse.

And yet, for all this, I cannot say, from my experience, that these minions of office or court favour were positively or abstractedly happy; and so I told my patron, who often amused himself with what he called my philosophy on these subjects, the

offspring, he said, of my intimacy with Fothergill and Manners.

One part indeed, and that not a small one, of the pleasure I took in my situation, was the frank communication of himself often made by this excellent, and, though a minister, this guileless man, in moments when it seemed a relief to him to unbend with a person he could confide in,

Finding him one morning reading Boyle on "Things above Reason," instead of official papers, and very philosophically inclined, I propounded my doubts to him on the happiness of courtiers.

"You are right," he said. "There is a great difference between positive happiness, and the absence of its contrary. Office and power are indeed notorious for their accompanying cares, and only two things can compensate to a man who dedicates himself to them, for the sacrifice he makes of his independence. For who the deuce, for the reward of a few hundreds a-year, which will not pay for his dinners or court suits, would sacrifice his days and nights, to be abused and vilified into the bargain, by at least one half of those whom he is endeavouring to serve?

"How often in the recess of my closet, and the silence of the night, after a hard-fought day, and I had been forced to listen to impertinencies which, as a public man, you must submit to, but which no private man would bear, have I pondered those