shivering in chapel, and his middle-class table, is rottener than the rest.  The money he saves in his damned beggarly court goes to buy men’s souls.  His word is good with none.  For my part I prefer a man who is drunk six days out of the seven to one who takes his pleasure so.  And I am not so great a fool that I cannot distinguish justice from injustice.  I know the wrongs of the colonies, which you yourself have put as clear as I wish to hear, despite Mr. Burke and his eloquence.

   [My grandfather has made a note here, which in justice should be
   added, that he was not deceived by Mr. Fox’s partiality.—­D.  C. C.]

And perhaps, Richard,” he concluded, with a last lingering look at the old pile as he turned his horses, “perhaps some day, I shall remember what you told us at Brooks’s.”

It was thus, boyishly, that Mr. Fox chose to take me into his confidence, an honour which I shall remember with a thrill to my dying day.  So did he reveal to me the impulses of his early life, hidden forever from his detractors.  How little does the censure of this world count, which cannot see the heart behind the embroidered waistcoat!  When Charles Fox began his career he was a thoughtless lad, but steadfast to such principles as he had formed for himself.  They were not many, but, compared to those of the arena which he entered, they were noble.  He strove to serve his friends, to lift the name of a father from whom he had received nothing but kindness, however misguided.  And when he saw at length the error of his ways, what a mighty blow did he strike for the right!

“Here is a man,” said Dr. Johnson, many years afterwards, “who has divided his kingdom with Caesar; so that it was a doubt whether the nation should be ruled by the sceptre of George the Third or the tongue of Fox.”

CHAPTER XL

VAUXHALL

Matters had come to a pretty pickle indeed.  I was openly warned at Brooks’s and elsewhere to beware of the duke, who was said upon various authority to be sulking in Hanover Square, his rage all the more dangerous because it was smouldering.  I saw Dolly only casually before the party to Vauxhall.  Needless to say, she flew in the face of Dr. James’s authority, and went everywhere.  She was at Lady Bunbury’s drum, whither I had gone in another fruitless chase after Mr. Marmaduke.  Dr. Warner’s verse was the laughter of the company.  And, greatly to my annoyance,—­in the circumstances,—­I was made a hero of, and showered with three times as many invitations as I could accept.

The whole story got abroad, even to the awakening of the duke in Covent Garden.  And that clownish Mr. Foote, of the Haymarket, had added some lines to a silly popular song entitled ‘The Sights o’ Lunnun’, with which I was hailed at Mrs. Betty’s fruit-stall in St. James’s Street.  Here is one of the verses: 

       “In Maryland, he hunts the Fox
        From dewy Morn till Day grows dim;
        At Home he finds a Paradox,
        From Noon till Dawn the Fox hunts him.”