protest, "I was not too young to know rottenness
as well as another. The times are rotten in England. You may have
virtue in America, amongst a people which is fresh from a struggle with
the earth and its savages. We have cursed little at home, in faith. The
King, with his barley water and rising at six, and 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 fl