hoof, and no expense
she would not eagerly incur, if it might by any means be shown to tend
to his advancement. I can tell you, bribes were administered, and in
high places too,--so near the royal person of His Majesty, that you
would be astonished were I to mention what great personages condescended
to receive our loans. I got from the English and Irish heralds a
description and detailed pedigree of the Barony of Barryogue, and
claimed respectfully to be reinstated in my ancestral titles, and also
to be rewarded with the Viscounty of Ballybarry. 'This head would become
a coronet,' my Lady would sometimes say, in her fond moments, smoothing
down my hair; and, indeed, there is many a puny whipster in their
Lordships' house who has neither my presence nor my courage, my
pedigree, nor any of my merits.

The striving after this peerage I considered to have been one of
the most unlucky of all my unlucky dealings at this period. I made
unheard-of sacrifices to bring it about. I lavished money here and
diamonds there. I bought lands at ten times their value; purchased
pictures and articles of vertu at ruinous prices. I gave repeated
entertainments to those friends to my claims who, being about the Royal
person, were likely to advance it. I lost many a bet to the Royal Dukes
His Majesty's brothers; but let these matters be forgotten, and,
because of my private injuries, let me not be deficient in loyalty to my
Sovereign.

The only person in this transaction whom I shall mention openly, is that
old scamp and swindler, Gustavus Adolphus, thirteenth Earl of Crabs.
This nobleman was one of the gentlemen of His Majesty's closet, and one
with whom the revered monarch was on terms of considerable intimacy. A
close regard had sprung up between them in the old King's time; when
His Royal Highness, playing at battledore and shuttlecock with the young
lord on the landing-place of the great staircase at Kew, in some moment
of irritation the Prince of Wales kicked the young Earl downstairs, who,
falling, broke his leg. The Prince's hearty repentance for his violence
caused him to ally himself closely with the person whom he had injured;
and when His Majesty came to the throne there was no man, it is said, of
whom the Earl of Bute was so jealous as of my Lord Crabs. The latter was
poor and extravagant, and Bute got him out of the way, by sending him
on the Russian and other embassies; but on this favourite's dismissal,
Crabs sped back from