Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/749

Rh full military costume, and Dunning fully arrayed in court suit, bag-wig, dress-sword, and silk hose, with brilliant buckles at knee and instep. On descending to the door of the hotel the latter shrank back with dismay at finding, instead of the expected chariot, two orderly dragoons holding the bridles of a couple of prancing chargers duly caparisoned for the field. Col. Barré was soon in the saddle; but it was not without some hesitation and the undignified help of the soldiers that the great lawyer succeeded in attaining a like elevation. Once wedged in the hollow of the demi-pique saddle, with its holsters in front and its raised cantle behind, he felt tolerably secure. But your horse has a quick perception of the capacity of his rider, and the proud steed on which Dunning rode chose to exercise his own discretion with regard to his movements. To their unconcealed amusement, the great Frederick and his staff were treated to an equestrian spectacle not set down in the programme of the day. Finding at last that these antics were getting somewhat too lively for him to cope with, poor Dunning was fain to beg for assistance in escaping from the back of his wilful quadruped, and the Prussian monarch and his suite became aware that their English allies had generals in Westminster Hall whose charges bore no affinity to charges in the field of war."

In London John Dunning was visited by his mother and father. The former did not by any means approve of the luxury of his table, and scolded him for extravagant housekeeping. But the father was puffed up with elation at seeing that his son had become so great a man. Neither lived to see him raised to the peerage.

Dunning was nearly fifty years old before he married, and then he took to him Elizabeth the daughter