General Conway continued in office as the other; the Duke of
Grafton was made first lord of the treasury; Charles Townshend became
chancellor of the exchequer; Sir Charles Saunders succeeded to the
admiralty; and the Earl of Hillsborough was nominated first lord of
trade. Several changes were also made in the subordinate places of the
treasury and the admiralty boards, and the strange medley, which soon
became more mixed and various, has been thus described by Burke:--"He
[Lord Chatham] made an administration so chequered and speckled; he
put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically
dovetailed; a cabinet so variously inlaid; such a piece of diversified
mosaic; such a tesselated pavement without cement; here a bit of black
stone, and there a bit of white; patriots and courtiers; king's friends
and republicans; Whigs and Tories; treacherous friends and open enemies;
that it was indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch,
and unsure to stand on. The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same
boards stared at each other, and were obliged to ask, Sir, your name?
Sir, you have the advantage of me. Mr. Such-a-one, I beg a thousand
pardons. I venture to say it did so happen, that persons had a single
office divided between them, who had never spoken to each other in their
lives, until they found themselves, they knew not how, pigging together,
heads and points, in the same truckle bed."

DECLINE OF LORD CHATHAM'S POPULARITY.

Lord Chesterfield characterised the exaltation of Pitt to an earldom as
"a fall up stairs"--a fall which hurt him so much, that he would never
be able to stand upright again. By his acceptance of a coronet, in
truth, he greatly diminished his popularity. Burke undermined his
influence in the city by two clever publications: in the first of these
he gave an account of the late short administration, and in the second
he gave a humorous and ironical reply to it, in which the disingenuous
conduct of their successors was ably exposed. The wit of Chesterfield
ably seconded the pen of Burke; and the Earl of Chatham soon found that
though he was dignified by the king, he had shorn himself of all his
honours in the sight of the people. The influence which the Earl of Bute
was supposed to have had over him tended still more to blight his fair
fame. He was taunted with being a willing agent of men whom he did not
esteem, and his acceptance of a peerage was a never-failing s