Even Lord Hervey complained bitterly at this time of the monotony of his daily round. He was dissatisfied, and considered that his services to the Government and the Crown should be repaid by some more considerable appointment than the one he held, which most people thought equal to his abilities, and was certainly in excess of his deserts. But Walpole, who knew how useful Hervey was as go-between, would not remove him from his post about the Queen, notwithstanding his representations. Chafing under this refusal Lord Hervey wrote the following letter to his friend Mrs. Clayton, another courtier and favourite who could sympathise with him in his _ennui_. It gives anything but a flattering picture of the royal circle:-- “I will not trouble you with any account of our occupations at Hampton Court. No mill-horse ever went in a more constant track, or a more unchanging circle, so that by the assistance of an almanack for the day of the week, and a watch for the hour of the day, you may inform yourself fully, without any other intelligence but your memory, of every transaction within the verge of the Court. Walking, chaises, levées, and audiences fill the morning; at night the King plays at commerce and backgammon, and the Queen at quadrille, where poor Lady Charlotte (de Roussie) runs her usual nightly gauntlet--the Queen pulling her hood, Mr. Schütz sputtering in her face, and the Princess Royal rapping her knuckles, all at a time. It was in vain she fled from persecution for her religion: she suffers for her pride what she escaped for her faith; undergoes in a drawing-room what she dreaded from the Inquisition, and will die a martyr to a Court, though not to a Church. “The Duke of Grafton takes his nightly opiate of lottery, and sleeps as usual between the Princesses Amelia and Caroline; Lord Grantham strolls from one room to another (as Dryden says) _like some discontented ghost that oft appears, and is forbid to speak_, and stirs himself about, as people stir a fire, not with any design, but in hopes to make it burn brisker, which his lordship constantly does, to no purpose, and yet tries as constantly as if he had ever once succeeded. “At last the King comes up, the pool finishes, and everybody has their dismission: their Majesties retire to Lady Charlotte and my Lord Lifford; the Princesses to Bilderbec and Lony; my Lord Grantham to Lady Frances and Mr. Clark; some to supper, and some to bed; and thus (to speak in the Scripture phrase) the evening and the morning make the day.”[95] Lord Hervey may have been prejudiced, but independent testimony comes from Lady Pomfret, who was then in attendance at court. She writes: “All things appear to move in the same manner as usual, and all our actions are as mechanical as the clock which directs them.”[96] FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER IX: [92] One stanza of his poem addressed to Sylvia (the Princess of Wales) ends thus:--