isable
for the sovereign, to instruct those lords immediately attendant upon
him, in person. Kings, you are not to be informed, are to be managed and
humoured by those that would win their confidence. If your lordship
could invent a sort of down, more soft and yielding than has yet been
employed, it might be something. But to point out to your master, that
he must say this, and write that, that he must send for one man, and
break with another, is an unpleasant and ungrateful office. It must be
your business to take the burden from his shoulders. You must smooth the
road you would have him take, and strew with flowers the path of ruin.
If he favour your schemes with a smile of approbation, if he bestow upon
your proceedings the sanction of a nod, it is enough. It is godlike
fortitude, and heroic exertion.

But secrecy is the very essence of deep and insidious conduct. I would
advise your lordship to bring even your own name into question, as
little as possible. My lord Chesterfield compares a statesman, who has
been celebrated for influence during the greatest part of the present
reign, to the ostrich. The brain of an ostrich, your lordship will
please to observe, though he be the largest of birds, may very easily be
included in the compass of a nut-shell. When pursued by the hunters, he
is said to bury his head in the sand, and having done this, to imagine
that he cannot be discovered by the keenest search. Do not you, my lord,
imitate the manners of the ostrich. Believe me, they are ungraceful;
and, if maturely considered, will perhaps appear to be a little silly.

There is a contrivance that has occurred to me, which, if it were not
accompanied with a circumstance somewhat out of date, appears to me in
the highest degree admirable. Suppose you were to treat the lords of the
bedchamber with a sight of St. Paul's cathedral? There is a certain part
of it of a circular form, commonly called the whispering gallery. You
have probably heard, that by the uncommon echo of this place, the
weakest sound that can possibly be articulated, is increased by that
time it has gone half round, into a sound, audible and strong. Your
lordship, with your flock of geese about you, would probably be frolic
and gamesome. You may easily contrive to scatter them through the whole
circumference of this apartment. Of a sudden, you will please to turn
your face to the wall, and utter in a solemn tone the royal opinion.
Every body will be at a los