The Queen really thought that Walpole was on the point of having outlived his ability and his powers to apply it for the benefit of herself and husband. She observed him melancholy, and set it down that he was mourning over his own difficulties and failures. When Caroline, however, was told that Sir Robert was not in sorrow because of the difficulties of government, but simply because his mistress, Miss Skerret, was dangerously ill of a pleuritic fever, the ‘unblemished Queen’ was glad! She rejoiced that politics had nothing to do with his grief, and she was extremely well pleased to find that the prime-minister was as immoral as men of greater and less dignity. And then she took to satirising both the prime-minister and the lady of his homage. She laughed at him for believing in the attachment of a woman whose motives must be mercenary, and who could not possibly see any attraction in such a man but through the meshes of his purse. ‘She must be a clever gentlewoman,’ said Caroline, ‘to have made him believe that she cares for him on any other score; and to show you what fools we all are on some point or other, she has certainly told him some fine story or other of her love, and her passion, and that poor man, with his burly body, swollen legs, and villainous stomach (“_avec ce gros corps, jambes enflés, et ce vilain ventre_”) believes her!--ah, what is human nature?’ On this rhapsody Lord Hervey makes a comment in the spirit of Burns’ verse-- Would but some god the giftie gi’e us, To see ourselves as ithers see us-- and it was excellent opportunity for such comment. ‘While she was saying this,’ remarks the noble lord, ‘she little reflected in what degree she herself possessed all the impediments and antidotes to love she had been enumerating, and that, “_Ah, what is human nature?_” was as applicable to her own blindness as to his.’