e of seeing company, and of forming
connections.

Having arranged these affairs, Lord George returned to Emmerick. His
wife had left him for Scotland, in order to be confined there; and this
event, attended by so much inconvenience, and prefaced by a voyage of
twelve days, "put her," as Lord George observed, "somewhat out of
countenance, after twenty-three years' marriage." Her return was delayed
for some time. "I shall be pretty lonely this winter (1751)," writes Lord
George to Mr. Edgar, "for my wife, who was brought to bed of a daughter
the middle of September, recovered but very slowly, and now the season
of the year is too far advanced for her to venture so long a voyage;
besides, she has some thoughts that Lady Sinclair (his daughter) may
come with her in the spring." In his solitude, anxieties about his
patrimonial property added to the sorrows of the exile. "I am
told,"[205] he writes, "that the Duke of Atholl is desirous of selling
the roialty of the Isle of Man to the London Government, for which, they
say, he is offered fifteen thousand pounds sterling. Had it not been for
my situation, I believe he could not have done it without my consent;
but, I'm sorry to say it, and it is a truth, that he is full as much my
enemy as any of that Government. He has sent my eldest son abroad, but,
as I understand, with positive orders not to see nor correspond with me.
All this is the more extraordinary that, thirty years ago, before he
turned courtier, he seemed to have very different notions. Most people
in Britain now regard neither probity nor any other virtue--all is
selfish and vainal (venial). But how can I complean of such hard usage,
when my royal master has met with what is a thousand times more cruel:
he bears it like a Christian hero, and it would ill suit me to repine. I
thank the Almighty I never did, and I think it my greatest honour and
glory to suffer in so just and upright a cause." Hope, however, of one
day returning to Scotland, was not extinct. He thus continues: "Upon
receipt of the note you sent me, I have gott the carabin, for which I
return you many thanks. I expect to kill a wild bore with it; but I fain
hope Providence may still order it that I may make use of it at home,
and, if all succeeds to our wishes, how happy should I think myself to
send you, when you returned to Angus, a good fatt stagg, shott in the
forest of Atholl with your own gun."

Until five years before his death, Lord George st