the humours of Wapping behind the veil of the Treasury. He had a coarse, blunt manner of speaking, that, looking like honesty, inclined men to hold his common sense in higher esteem than it deserved; but, having neither knowledge[226] nor dignity, his style, when he was to act as minister, appeared naked, vulgar, and irreverent to an assembly that expects to be informed, and that generally chooses to reprehend, not to be reprehended. When a statesman ventures to be familiar, he must captivate his audience by uncommon graces, or win their good-will by a humane pleasantry that seems to flow from the heart, and to be the effusion of universal benevolence. This was the secret as well as character of Henry the Fourth of France: even the semblance of it stood his grandson, our Charles the Second, in signal stead, and veiled his unfeeling heart, and selfish and remorseless insensibility. Men were puzzled to guess at the motive of so improper a choice as this of Sir Francis Dashwood. The banner of religion was displayed at Court, and yet all the centurions were culled from the most profligate societies. Sir Francis had long been known by his singularities and some humour. In his early youth, accoutred like Charles the Twelfth, he had travelled to Russia in hopes of captivating the Czarina; but neither the character nor dress of Charles were well imagined to catch a _woman’s_ heart. In Italy, Sir Francis had given in to the most open profaneness; and, at his return, had assembled a society[227] of Young Travellers, to which a taste for the arts and antiquity, or merely having travelled, were the recommendatory ingredients. Their pictures were drawn, ornamented with symbols and devices; and the founder, in the habit of St. Francis, and with a chalice in his hand, was represented at his devotions before a statue of the Venus of Medicis, a stream of glory beaming on him from behind her lower hand. These pictures were long exhibited in their club-room at a tavern in Palace Yard; but of later years Saint Francis had instituted a more select order. He and some chosen friends had hired the ruins of Medmenham Abbey, near Marlow, and refitted it in a conventual style. Thither at stated seasons they adjourned; had each their cell, a proper habit, a monastic name, and a refectory in common--besides a chapel, the decorations of which may well be supposed to have contained the quintessence of their mysteries, since it was impenetrable to any but the initiated. Whatever their doctrines were, their practice was rigorously pagan: Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they almost publicly sacrificed. The old Lord Melcomb was one of the brotherhood. Yet their follies would have escaped the eye of the public, if Lord Bute from this seminary of piety and wisdom had not selected a Chancellor of the Exchequer. But politics had no sooner infused themselves amongst these rosy anchorites, than dissensions