[240] This is a very one-sided view of the character of the Duc de Nivernois. He had no pretensions to the character of a soldier, having been obliged to quit the army from ill-health at an early age. As a diplomatist, he certainly failed at Berlin--as all other diplomatists did, who brought proposals that did not suit the views of the King of Prussia. In England he gave great satisfaction to all parties. His popularity is noticed by Lord Chesterfield. He was a generous, though not perhaps a very discriminating, patron of letters, and a respectable writer for one who made literature only an amusement. His private life was exemplary; and he showed no common strength of mind in the firmness with which he bore the loss of his rank and property, and, above all, his heavy domestic misfortunes. His second wife, to whom he was tenderly attached, died a few days after marriage. Of his two sons-in-law, the Count de Gisors, his destined heir, an élève of Marmontel, fell at the battle of Crevelt: the remaining one, the Duc de Brissac, was torn to pieces by the mob at Paris, at the beginning of the Revolution. The Duke of Nivernois died in 1798, at a very advanced age.--E. [241] Besides his crime of being the favourite of the Duke of Cumberland, Fox had deeply offended the Princess by advising Mr. Pelham, the very day after the death of her husband, to take her son, the present King, from her, that she might not get an ascendant over him. I one day mentioned this fact to Lord Mansfield: he said, “It was very true, and he believed the measure was not followed, _only_ because Mr. Fox had advised it”--so jealous was Mr. Pelham of Fox! [242] James Earl Waldegrave, Governor to George the Third when Prince. [243] William Cavendish, fourth Duke of Devonshire, Lord Chamberlain. [244] Many causes might be assigned for the Duke’s dissatisfaction. It is not improbable that a generous Prince might resent the indignity offered to his country. He might, too, resent the unrelenting hatred of the Princess, and his total exclusion from power. He might feel for Germany, his other country, which he saw neglected: or he might have hoped that the aversion of the Princess to the House of Brunswick would not cease without disgusting Prince Ferdinand; and that then, if the war had continued, the command would have once more devolved on himself. [245] Samuel Martin, a West Indian, had been in the service of the late Prince of Wales. See more of him hereafter, and in Churchill’s “Duellist.” [He had been brought into the Treasury by Mr. Legge when the latter was made Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sir George Colebrooke’s MS. Memoirs represent him as a plain-spoken, honest man, and more to be depended upon than his joint secretary Mr. West.--E.]