gain, until at least he will perceive a just hope of their
consummation.

I went with a quiet air and a set brow into the world. It was a time of
great political excitement. Though my creed forbade me the open senate,
it could not deprive me of the veiled intrigue. St. John found ample
employment for my ambition; and I entered into the toils and objects of
my race with a seeming avidity more eager and engrossing than their own.
In what ensues, you will perceive a great change in the character of my
memoirs. Hitherto, I chiefly portrayed to you _myself_. I bared open to
you my heart and temper,--my passions, and the thoughts which belong to
our passions. I shall now rather bring before you the natures and the
minds of others. The lover and the dreamer are no more! The satirist
and the observer; the derider of human follies, participating while he
derides; the worldly and keen actor in the human drama,--these are what
the district of my history on which you enter will portray me. 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 v