any of his children,' and
'suffered him,' he says, 'to be too much indulged.'

Some difficulties attended the fruition of the forward boy's wish. The
Duchess of Kendal was jealous of Sir Robert Walpole's influence with the
king: her aim was to bring Lord Bolingbroke into power. The childish
fancy was, nevertheless, gratified: and under his mother's care he was
conducted to the apartments of the Duchess of Kendal in St. James's.

'A favour so unusual to be asked by a boy of ten years old,' he
afterwards wrote in his 'Reminiscences,' 'was still too slight to be
refused to the wife of the first minister and her darling child.'
However, as it was not to be a precedent, the interview was to be
private, and at night.

It was ten o'clock in the evening when Lady Walpole, leading her son,
was admitted into the apartments of Melusina de Schulenberg, Countess of
Walsingham, who passed under the name of the Duchess of Kendal's niece,
but who was, in fact, her daughter, by George I. The polluted rooms in
which Lady Walsingham lived were afterwards occupied by the two
mistresses of George II.--the Countess of Suffolk, and Madame de
Walmoden, Countess of Yarmouth.

With Lady Walsingham, Lady Walpole and her little son waited until,
notice having been given that the king had come down to supper, he was
led into the presence of 'that good sort of man,' as he calls George I.
That monarch was pleased to permit the young courtier to kneel down and
kiss his hand. A few words were spoken by the august personage, and
Horace was led back into the adjoining room.

But the vision of that 'good sort of man' was present to him when, in
old age, he wrote down his recollections for his beloved Miss Berry. By
the side of a tall, lean, ill-favoured old German lady--the Duchess of
Kendal--stood a pale, short, elderly man, with a dark tie-wig, in a
plain coat and waistcoat: these and his breeches were all of
snuff-coloured cloth, and his stockings of the same colour. By the blue
riband alone could the young subject of this 'good sort of man' discern
that he was in the presence of majesty. Little interest could be
elicited in this brief interview, yet Horace thought it his painful
duty, being also the son of a prime minister, to shed tears when, with
the other scholars of Eton College, he walked in the procession to the
proclamation of George II. And no doubt he was one of _very_ few
personages in England whose eyes Were moistened for that event.