months to prevent Mr. Conway’s resignation; and though I succeeded, and afterwards shut the door both on Grenville and Lord Rockingham, the person[303] who profited of my fatigues, and of the credit I had with Mr. Conway, proved so unworthy; and so sick did I grow both of that person and of the fatigues I underwent, that I totally withdrew myself from the scene of politics, and tasted far more satisfaction in my retreat than I had done in the warmest moments of success and triumph. The joys of a private station present themselves--are bought by no anxiety. I never found pleasures answer that were purchased by trouble. It is like many moral aphorisms, a theme for poets, untrue in practice. All proposals of accommodations proving fruitless,[304] Lord Edgcumbe was dismissed, and his staff placed in Shelley’s hands. The wound rankled so deeply in Mr. Conway’s bosom, that he dropped all intercourse with Lord Chatham; and though he continued to conduct the King’s business in the House of Commons, he would neither receive nor pay any deference to the Minister’s orders, acting for or against, as he approved or disliked his measures;--a scorn that became his character, and which he supported with very different dignity from that of Lord Chatham, whose tone being fictitious and assumed, could not bear him out in the implicit obedience he expected. Like oracles and groves, whose sanctity depended on the fears of the devout, and whose mysterious and holy gloom vanished as soon as men dared to think and walk through them, Lord Chatham’s authority ceased with his popularity; and his godhead, when he had affronted his priests.