there been either malice or rancour in what he said. He loved society,
and in his choice of friends preferred those over whom he had a
decided superiority of talent. He was satisfied when he had put the
table in a roar, and he did not like to see it done by another. When
Garrick and Foote were present, he took the lead, and hardly allowed
them an opportunity of showing their talents for mimicry, because he
could excel them in their own art. He shone particularly in taking off
the principal members of the House of Commons. Among the few whom he
feared was Mr Selwyn, and at a dinner at Lord Gower's they had a trial
of skill, in which Mr Selwyn prevailed. When the company broke up, Mr
Townshend, to show that he had no animosity, carried him in his
carriage to White's; and, as they parted, Selwyn could not help
saying--'Remember, this is the first set-down you have given me
to-day.'"

As Townshend lived at a considerable expense, and had little paternal
fortune, he speculated occasionally in both the French and English
funds. One of the incidents related by Sir George, and without a
syllable of censure too, throws on him an imputation of trickery
which, in our later day, would utterly destroy any public man. "When
he was chancellor of the exchequer, he came in his nightgown to a
dinner given by the Duke of Grafton to several of the principal men of
the city to settle the loan. After dinner, when the terms were
settled, and every body present wished to introduce some friend on the
list of subscribers, he pretended to cast up the sums already
admitted, said the loan was full, huddled up his papers, got into a
chair, and returned home, reserving to himself by this manoeuvre a
large share of the loan." An act of this kind exhibits the honesty of
the last age in a very equivocal point of view. If proud of nothing
else, we may be proud of the public sense of responsibility; in our
day, it may be presumed that such an act would be impossible, for it
would inevitably involve the ruin of the perpetrator, followed by the
ruin of any ministry which would dare to defend him.

At this period died a brother of the king, Edward Duke of York, a man
devoted to pleasure, headstrong in his temper, and ignorant in his
conceptions. "Immoderate travelling, followed by immoderate balls and
entertainments," had long kept his blood in a peculiar state of
accessibility to disease. He died of a putrid fever. Walpole makes a
panegyric on the Duke