whether you sit on one bench or on another, so that you do not sit in a
thorough draught--or dine at Lord Lincoln's, or Lord Dawton's, so long
as the cooks are equally good? As for Dawton, I always thought him a
shuffling, mean fellow, who buys his wines at the second price, and
sells his offices at the first. Come, my dear fellow, let us drink to
his confusion."

So saying, Guloseton filled my glass to the brim. He had sympathized
with me--I thought it, therefore, my duty to sympathize with him; nor
did we part till the eyes of the bon vivant saw more things in heaven
and earth, than are dreamt of in the philosophy of the sober.

VOLUME VII.

CHAPTER LXXIII.

Si ad honestatem nati sumus ea aut sola expetenda est, aut certe omni
pondere gravior est habenda quam reliqua omnia.--Tully.

Cas. Brutus, I do observe you now of late: I have not from your eyes
that gentleness, And shew of love as I was wont to have.--Julius
Caesar.

I rose at my usual early hour; sleep had tended to calm, and, I hope,
also, to better my feelings. I had now leisure to reflect, that I had
not embraced my party from any private or interested motive; it was not,
therefore, from a private or interested motive that I was justified in
deserting it. Our passions are terrible sophists! When Vincent had told
me, the day before, that it was from men, not measures, that I was to
change, and that such a change could scarcely deserve the name, my heart
adopted the assertion, and fancied it into truth.

I now began to perceive the delusion; were government as mechanically
perfect as it has never yet been (but as I trust it may yet be), it
would signify little who were the mere machines that regulated its
springs: but in a constitution like ours, the chief character of
which--pardon me, ye De Lolmites--is its uncertainty; where men
invariably make the measures square to the dimensions of their own
talent or desire; and where, reversing the maxim of the tailor, the
measures so rarely make the men; it required no penetration to see how
dangerous it was to entrust to the aristocratic prejudice of Lincoln,
or the vehement imbecility of Lesborough, the execution of the very same
measures which might safely be committed to the plain sense of Dawton,
and, above all, to the great and various talents of his coadjutors. But
what made the vital difference between the two parties was less in the
leaders than the body. In the Dawton faction, the best, t