HIS DEATH IN A BERNARDINE CONVENT.

193

live on the meagre pay of eighteen pistoles a month. The Duke of Ormond, then an exile, took pity on his wife, and supported her for a time: she afterwards rejoined her mother at Madrid.

Meanwhile, the year 1730 brought about a salutary change in the duke's morals. His health was fast giving way from the effects of divers excesses; and there is nothing like bad health for purging a bad soul. The end of a misspent life was fast drawing near, and he could only keep it up by broth with eggs beaten up in it. He lost the use of his limbs, but not of his gaiety. In the mountains of Catalonia he met with a mineral spring which did him some good; so much, in fact, that he was able to rejoin his regiment for a time. A fresh attack sent him back to the waters; but on his way he was so violently attacked that he was forced to stop at a little village. Here he found himself without the means of going farther, and in the worst state of health. The monks of a Bernardine convent took pity on him and received him into their house. He grew worse and worse; and in a week died on the 31st of May, without a friend to pity or attend him, among strangers, and at the early age of thirty-two.

Thus ended the life of one of the cleverest fools that have ever disgraced our peerage.

LORD HERVEY.

George II. arriving from Hanover.-His Meeting with the Queen.-Lady Suffolk.Queen Caroline. Sir Robert Walpole.-Lord Hervey.-A set of Fine Gentlemen. -An Eccentric Race.-Carr, Lord Hervey.-A Fragile Boy.-Description of George II.'s Family.-Anne Brett.-A Bitter Cup.-The Darling of the Family. -Evenings at St. James's.-Frederick, Prince of Wales.-Amelia Sophia Walmoden. Poor Queen Caroline!-Nocturnal Diversions of Maids of Honour.Neighbour George's Orange Chest.-Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey.—Rivalry.Hervey's Intimacy with Lady Mary.-Relaxations of the Royal Household.— Bacon's 's Opinion of Twickenham.-A Visit to Pope's Villa.-The Little Nightingale. The Essence of Small Talk.-Hervey's Affectation and Effeminacy.-Pope's Quarrel with Hervey and Lady Mary.-Hervey's Duel with Pulteney.—The Death of Lord Hervey: a Drama.'-Queen Caroline's last Drawing-room.-Her Illness and Agony.-A Painful Scene.-The Truth discovered.-The Queen's Dying Bequests.-The King's Temper.-Archbishop Potter is sent for.-The Duty of Reconciliation.-The Death of Queen Caroline.-A Change in Hervey's Life. Lord Hervey's Death.-Want of Christianity.-Memoirs of his Own Time. THE village of Kensington was disturbed in its sweet repose one day, more than a century ago, by the rumbling of a ponderous coach and six, with four out-riders and two equerries kicking up the dust; whilst a small body of heavy dragoons rode solemnly after the huge vehicle. It waded, with inglorious struggles, through a deep mire of mud, between the Palace and Hyde Park, until the cortège entered Kensington Park, as the gardens were then called, and began to track the old road that led to the red-brick structure to which William III. had added a higher story, built by Wren. There are two roads by which coaches could approach the house one,' as the famous John, Lord Hervey, wrote to his mother, 'so convex, the other so concave, that, by this extreme of faults, they agree in the common one of being, like the

106

GEORGE II. ARRIVING FROM HANOVER.

right ad, impassable.' The rumbling coach, with its plecoe steeds, toils slowly on, and reaches the dismal pile, of 92700 710 association is so precious as that of its having been Puthplace of our loved Victoria Regina. All around, as moined carriago impressively veers round into the

SHOX RAYOUTs of William and Mary, of Anne, of Snet and Harley, Atterbury and Bolingbroke. But picasant days compared to those of the second lose return from Hanover in this mountain of a sow acsribed. eding steeds are gracefully curbed by the state at his splet livery, with his cocked-hat and gray now the horses are faming and reeking vate fom the world's end to Kensington, and ay been to meet King George on his entrance • cot de les vached Fem Hoivoetsinys, on his lime, as he gets to spend his birth

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