Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 1).djvu/264

238 prudent that he should resign his commission, and undergo a sort of family exile near Lausanne in Switzerland, where I saw him in the winter of 1760 living upon a very poor allowance and but very meanly looked after. He was very fond of coming among the young English at Lausanne, who suffered his company at times from motives of curiosity and sometimes from humanity. He was always dirtily clad, but it was easy to perceive something gentlemanlike in his manners, and a look of birth about him under all his disadvantages. His conversation was a mixture of weakness and shrewdness, as is common to most madmen. When he heard of his brother Lord George's behaviour at the battle of Minden, he immediately said, 'I always told you that my brother George was no better than myself.'

"Lord George, the third son, afterwards Lord Sackville, had by these means a great road open to his father's favour, on which he imposed by many circumstances so as to gain the entire and exclusive direction of him. He was a tall man, with a long face, rather strong features, clear blue eyes, a large make, though rather womanly, not too corpulent, and a mixture of quickness and a sort of melancholy in his look which runs through all the Sackville family, such as is seen in the antique statues often to accompany great beauty. He was educated at Westminster school, where he became connected with a remarkable set of men, who were then upon the Westminster foundation, the principal of whom were Mr. Murray, since Lord Mansfield; the two Stones, one of whom came to be Secretary to and in effect governed the Duke of Newcastle—the other, Primate of Ireland; Markham, since Archbishop of York, &c., a set of men who by sticking together and contenting themselves mostly with subaltern situations or at least with subaltern roads to great situations, pursuing always a Machiavelian line of policy, clinging to the Duke of Newcastle and his brother as long as they had any power left, and abandoning them as readily to pay their court to every new favourite, cultivating Whig connections with Tory prin-