"'My dear friend, why do you ask for such a trifling employment?' exclaimed his Grace, 'your relation shall have it at a word's speaking, the moment it is vacant.'--'But how shall I get admitted to you my Lord? for, in London, I understand, it is a very difficult business to get a sight of you great folks, though you are so kind and complaisant to us in the country.'--'The instant the man dies,' replied the premier, used to and prepared for the freedom of a contested election,--'the moment he dies, set out post-haste for London; drive directly to my house, by night or by day, sleeping or waking, dead or alive, thunder at the door; I will leave word with my porter to show you up-stairs directly, and the employment shall be disposed of according to your wishes.' "The parties separated; the Duke drove to a friend's house in the neighbourhood, where he was visiting, without a wish or a design of seeing his new acquaintance till that day seven years; but the memory of a Cornish elector, not being loaded with such a variety of subjects, was more retentive. The supervisor died a few months after, and the ministerial partisan relying on the word of a peer, was conveyed to London post-haste, and ascended with alacrity the steps of a large house, now divided into three, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, at the corner of Great Queen Street. "The reader should be informed that precisely at the moment when the expectations of a considerable party of a borough in Cornwall were roused by the death of a supervisor, no less a person than the King of Spain was expected hourly to depart; an event in which the Minister of Great Britain was particularly concerned. "The Duke of Newcastle, on the very night that the proprietor of the decisive vote was at his door, had sat up anxiously expecting despatches from Madrid: wearied by official business and agitated spirits, he retired to rest, having previously given particular instructions to his porter not to go to bed, as he expected every minute a messenger with advices of the greatest importance, and desired he might be shown up-stairs the moment of his arrival. "His Grace was sound asleep; for, with a thousand singularities, of which the rascals about him did not forget to take advantage, his worst enemies could not deny him the merit of good design, that best solace in a solitary hour. The porter, settled for the night in his chair, had already commenced a sonorous nap, when the vigorous arm of the Cornish voter roused him from his slumbers.