From whatever pangs to me the change may have been wrought, you will be
the gainer by that change. The gaudy dissipation of courts; the
vicissitudes and the vanities of those who haunt them; the glittering
jest and the light strain; the passing irony or the close reflection;
the characters of the great; the colloquies of wit,--these are what
delight the temper, and amuse the leisure more than the solemn narrative
of fated love. As the monster of the Nile is found beneath the sunniest
banks and in the most freshening wave, the stream may seem to wander on
in melody and mirth,--the ripple and the beam; but /who/ shall tell what
lurks, dark, and fearful, and ever vigilant, below!



CHAPTER II.

AMBITIOUS PROJECTS.

IT is not my intention to write a political history, instead of a
private biography. No doubt in the next century there will be volumes
enough written in celebration of that era which my contemporaries are
pleased to term the greatest that in modern times has ever existed.
Besides, in the private and more concealed intrigues with which I was
engaged with St. John, there was something which regard for others would
compel me to preserve in silence. I shall therefore briefly state that
in 1712 St. John dignified the peerage by that title which his exile and
his genius have rendered so illustrious.

I was with him on the day this honour was publicly announced. I found
him walking to and fro his room, with his arms folded, and with a very
peculiar compression of his nether lip, which was a custom he had when