GEORGE II. AND HIS FATHER'S WILL.

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ally disappointed of the expected bequest from her father, the king.*

In the apartments at St. James's Lord Chesterfield for some time lived, when he was not engaged in office abroad; and there he dissipated large sums in play. It was here, too, that Queen Caroline, the wife of George II., detected the intimacy that existed between Chesterfield and Lady Suffolk. There was an obscure window in Queen Caroline's apartments, which looked into a dark passage, lighted only by a single lamp at night. One Twelfth Night Lord Chesterfield, having won a large sum at cards, deposited it with Lady Suffolk, thinking it not safe to carry it home at night. He was watched, and his intimacy with the mistress of George II. thereupon inferred. Thenceforth he could obtain no court influence; and, in desperation, he went into the opposition.

On the death of George I., a singular scene, with which Lord Chesterfield's interests were connected, occurred in the Privy Council. Dr. Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, produced the king's will, and delivered it to his successor, expecting that it would be opened and read in the council; what was his consternation, when his Majesty, without saying a word, put it into his pocket, and stalked out of the room with real German imperturbability! Neither the astounded prelate nor the subservient council ventured to utter a word. The will was never more heard of: rumour declared that it was burnt. The contents, of course, never transpired; and the legacy of 40,000l., said to have been left to the Duchess of Kendal, was never more spoken of, until Lord Chester

* In the 'Annual Register,' for 1774, p. 20, it is stated that as George I. had left Lady Walsingham a legacy which his successor did not think proper to deliver, the Earl of Chesterfield was determined to recover it by a suit in Chancery, had not his Majesty, on questioning the Lord Chancellor on the subject, and being answered that he could give no opinion extrajudicially, thought proper to fulfil the bequest.

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DISSOLVING VIEWS.

field, in 1733, married the Countess of Walsingham. In 1743, it is said, he claimed the legacy-in right of his wife— the Duchess of Kendal being then dead: and was 'quieted' with 20,0007., and got, as Horace Walpole observes, nothing from the duchess-'except his wife.'

The only excuse that was urged to extenuate this act, on the part of George II., was that his royal father had burned two wills which had been made in his favour. These were supposed to be the wills of the Duke and Duchess of Zell and of the Electress Sophia. There was not even common honesty in the house of Hanover at that period.

Disappointed in his wife's fortune, Lord Chesterfield seems to have cared very little for the disappointed heiress. Their union was childless. His opinion of marriage appears very much to have coincided with that of the world of malcontents who rush, in the present day, to the court of Judge Cresswell, with dissolving views.' On one occasion, he writes thus: 'I have at last done the best office that can be done to most married people; that is, I have fixed the separation between my brother and his wife, and the definitive treaty of peace will be proclaimed in about a fortnight.'

Horace Walpole related the following anecdote of Sir William Stanhope (Chesterfield's brother) and his lady, whom he calls a fond couple.' After their return from Paris, when they arrived at Lord Chesterfield's house at Blackheath, Sir William, who had, like his brother, a cutting, polite wit, that was probably expressed with the 'allowed simper' of Lord Chesterfield, got out of the chaise and said, with a low bow, Madame, I hope I shall never see your face again.' She replied, Sir, I will take care that you never shall;' and so they parted.

There was little probability of Lord Chesterfield's participating in domestic felicity, when neither his heart nor his fancy were engaged in the union which he had formed. The lady to whom he was really attached, and by whom he had a son, resided in the Netherlands: she passed by the name of