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display. Mr. DODINGTON, who had learned the art of imposing upon the mind by the spectacle of state, and the parade of magnificence, was not to be approached, in any of his places of abode but through a suite of apartments luxuriating in ornament, and conducting to the room where he was seated under painted ceilings and gilt entablatures. When he passed from Pall-Mall,' says Mr. CUMBERLAND, to La Trappe, it was always in a coach, which I could suspect had been his ambassadorial equipage at Madrid, drawn by six fat unwieldy black horses, short docked and of colossal dignity neither was he less characteristic in apparel than in equipage; he had a wardrobe loaded with rich and flaring suits, each in itself a load to the wearer, and of those I have no doubt that many were coeval with his embassy above mentioned, and every birth-day had added to the stock. In doing this, he so contrived as never to put his old dresses out of countenance by any variations in the fashion of the new; in the mean time, his bulk and corpulency gave full display to a vast expense and profusion of brocade and embroidery, and this when set off with an enormous tie-periwig, and deep laced ruffles, gave the picture of an ancient courtier in his gala habit, or Quin in his stage dress; nevertheless, it must be confessed, this style, though out of date was not out of character, but harmonized so well with the person of the wearer, that I remember when he made his first speech in the House of Peers, as Lord MELCOMBE, all the flashes of his wit, all the studied

phrases and well-turned periods of his rhetoric, lost their effect, simply, because the orator had laid aside his magisterial tie, and put on a modern bag-wig, which was as much out of costume upno the broad expanse of his shoulders, as a cue would have been upon the robes of the lord chief justice.'

When this stately personage went to St. James's, in order to pay his devoirs to the late Queen CHARLOTTE, upon her nuptials, he was arrayed in an embroidered suit of silk, with lilac waistcoat and breeches; of which the latter, while the noble peer was in the act of kneeling down to kiss her majesty's hand, exhibited a sudden rupture or schism in their continuity which was very distressing to the wearer, however ridiculous it might seem to the bystanders.

Mr. CUMBERLAND speaks in terms of praise of the wit and scholarship of Mr. DODINGTON. Tacitus was his favourite prose writer, and that author usually lay on the table before him. Mr. DODINGTON had that peculiarity in the structure of his mind, that he could discover truth better at first sight, than upon recondite investigation, or elaborate research. He saw the different bearings of a proposition as by a sort of instinctive intuition, but if he attempted to break it into parts, or dissect it into its primary elements, his judgment became bewildered, and his mind confused. He could judge of the whole, though he could not trace the relations of the disjointed members, or reunite them in a consistent harmony. This state of his intellectual

faculty rendered his impromptus usually better than his set speeches; and his first suggestions were found more wise than his premeditated opinions. Cards never made one of Mr. DoDINGTON's evening amusements. For this instrument of killing time he substituted the more instructive process of reading, with which he was wont to entertain his company.

In February, 1759, Mr. CUMBERLAND married the daughter of GEORGE RIDGE, Esq. of Kilmiston, in the county of Hants. On the accession of GEORGE the Third, his patron, Lord HALIFAX, was appointed to the office of lordlieutenant of Ireland. The well-known WILLIAM GERARD HAMILTON accompanied him to that country as chief secretary, while Mr. CUMBERLAND held the secondary post of Ulster secretary. He had at the same time the superintendence of Lord HALIFAX's private fortune, which was in an embarrassed situation; and all his vigilance and economy were requisite for the purpose of rescuing his lordship from old distresses, or of preventing new.

Before his departure for Ireland, Mr. CUMBERLAND Went to take leave of his friend DoDINGTON, now Lord MELCOMBE, whom he found practising attitudes in his new robes before a looking-glass, in order that he might appear with advantage at the approaching coronation.

At Dublin, the office which Mr. CUMBERLAND held, made him an inhabitant of the castle; and he was lodged in very commodious

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apartments. He found the state of society in the Irish, very different from that which he had left in the British capital. The line of aristocratic separation was less apparent. The different classes of society were thrown more together. The social mass was more a compound of heterogeneous ingredients. Lawyers, soldiers, statesmen, and divines, met in a sort of promiscuous assemblage in the houses of the great. Their tables displayed a degree of profusion, greater than what Mr. CUMBERLAND had been wont to behold; and the inconsiderable prodigality of the Irish character was strikingly developed to his astonished sight. Nothing that he had seen in England could rival the Polish magnificence of Primate STONE, or the Parisian luxury of Mr. CLEMENTS.' In the houses of several of the Irish prelates the spirit of conviviality was indulged with so little restraint, and the glass circulated so freely, that the parties present seemed to have forgotten altogether that the feast was furnished by one of the chiefs of a Christian communion. It is certain, at least, that abstemiousness and tempe-rance were by no means the order of the day.

Among the society which he frequented in Dublin, Mr. CUMBERLAND was more than once gratified by that of GEORGE FAULKNER, the printer of the Dublin Journal, to whose eccentricities but few parallels could be found; and which were such as to defy the possibility of caricature. Mr. CUMBERLAND says that he had a solemn intrepidity of egotism, and a

daring contempt of absurdity, that fairly outfaced imitation.' He never joined in the laugh he had raised, nor felt the ridicule he had provoked. He gave good meat and excellent claret in abundance. I once sat at his table,' continues Mr. CUMBERLAND, 'from dinner till two in the morning, whilst GEORGE Swallowed immense potations, with one solitary sodden strawberry at the bottom of the glass, which he said was recommended to him by his doctor for its cooling properties. He never lost his recollection or equilibrium the whole time, and was in excellent foolery: it was a singular coincidence, that there was a person in company who had received his reprieve at the gallows, and the very judge who had passed sentence of death upon him. This did not, in the least, disturb the harmony of the society, nor embarrass any human creature present.'

A short time before Lord HALIFAX quitted the government of Ireland, his lordship had an opportunity of promoting Mr. CUMBERLAND'S father to the Bishopric of CLONFERT, upon a vacancy occurring in that see. This circumstance afterwards led the author of the OBSER-VER frequently to renew his visits to Ireland, during the residence of his father in that country. Hence he had frequent opportunities of noting the extraordinary peculiarities, and deline ting the discriminating features of the Irish character.

When Lord HALIFAX had resigned the vicec 2