second great attempt to restore the Stuarts.

Notwithstanding the apparent tranquillity of the Chevalier St. George,
he had been continually though cautiously maintaining, during his
residence at Albano, as friendly an intercourse with the English
visitors to Rome as circumstances would permit. Most young men of
family and condition travelled, during the time of peace, in Italy; many
were thus the opportunities which occurred of conciliating these
youthful scions of great and influential families. As one instance of
this fact, the account given by Joseph Spence, the author of the
"Anecdotes" and of "Polymetis," affords a curious picture of the
eagerness evinced by James and his wife, during the infancy of their
son, to ingraft his infant image on the memory, and affections of the
English. Mr. Spence visited Rome while Charles Edward was yet in his
cradle. He was expressly enjoined by his father, before his departure
from England, on no account to be introduced to the Chevalier. Yet such
were the advances made to him, as his own letter[8] will show, that it
was almost impossible for him to resist the overture: and similar
overtures were made to almost every Englishman of family or note who
visited Rome at that period.

In addition to these efforts, a continual correspondence was maintained
between James and his Scottish adherents. The Chevalier's greatest
accomplishment was his art of writing letters; and he appears eminently
to have excelled in that power of conciliation which was so essential in
his circumstance.

Meantime Charles grew up, justifying, as he increased in stature, and as
his disposition revealed itself, the most ardent expectations of those
who wished well to his cause. One failing he very early evinced; that
remarkable devotion to certain favourites which marked the conduct of
his ancestors; and the partiality was more commonly built upon the
adulation bestowed by those favourites than founded in reason.

It was in the year 1741 that the royal youth, then scarcely nineteen
years of age, became acquainted with a man whose qualities of mind, and
attractions of manner, exercised a very considerable influence over his
destiny; and whose character, pliant, yet bitter, intriguing and
perfidious, came afterwards into a painful collision with the haughty
overbearing temper, and manly sincerity, of Lord George Murray.

It was in consequence of the practice adopted by some of the hangers-on
of the Chevalier'