more circumstantial or positive to go upon, than what I have ready related. But the Duke of Ormond had been for some time, I cannot say how long, engaged with the Chevalier: he had taken the direction of this whole affair, as far as it related to England, upon himself, and had received a commission for this purpose, which contained the most ample powers that could be given. But still, however, all was unsettled, undetermined, and ill-understood. The Duke had asked from France a small body of forces, a sum of money, and a quantity of ammunition; but to the first part of the request he received a flat denial, but was made to hope that some arms and some ammunition might be given. This was but a very gloomy prospect; yet hope swelled the depressed party so high, that they talked of nothing less than an instant and ready revolution. It was their interest to be secret and industrious; but, rendered sanguine by their passions, they made no doubt of subverting a government with which they were angry, and gave as great an alarm, as would have been imprudent at the eve of a general insurrection.

Such was the state of things when Bolingbroke ar rived to take up his new office at Comercy; and although he saw the deplorable state of the party with which he was embarked, yet he resolved to give his affairs the best complexion he was able, and set out for Paris, in order to procure from that court the necessary succours for his new master's invasion of England. But his reception and negotiations at Paris were still more unpromising than those at Comercy; and nothing but absolute infatuation seemed to dic tate every measure taken by the party. He there found a multitude of people at work, and every one doing what seemed good in his own eyes; no subor. dination, no order, no concert. The Jacobites had wrought one another up to look upon the success of

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the present designs as infallible: every meetinghouse which the populace demolished, as he himself says, every little drunken riot which happened, served to confirm them in these sanguine expectations; and there was hardly one among them, who would lose the air of contributing by his intrigues to the restoration, which he took for granted would be brought about in a few weeks. Care and hope, says our author very humourously, sate on every busy Irish face; those who could read and write had letters to shew; and those who had not arrived to this pitch of erudition had their secrets to whisper. No sex was excluded from this ministry; Fanny Oglethorpe kept - her corner in it; and Olive Trant, a woman of the same mixed reputation, was the great wheel of this political machine. The ridiculous correspondence was carried on with England by people of like importance, and who were busy in sounding the alarm in the ears of an enemy, whom it was their interest to surprise. By these means, as he himself continues to inform us, the government of England was put on its guard, so that before he came to Paris, what was doing had been discovered. The little armament made at Havre de Grace, which furnished the only means to the Pretender of landing on the coasts of Britain, and which had exhausted the treasury of St. Germains, was talked of publicly. The Earl of Stair, the English minister at that city, very soon discovered its destination, and all the particulars of the intended invasion; the names of the persons from whom supplies came, and who were particularly active in the design, were whispered about at tea-tables and coffee-houses. In short, what by the indiscretion of the projectors, what by the private interests and ambitious views of the French, the most private transactions came to light; and such of the more prudent plotters, who supposed that they had trusted

their heads to the keeping of one or two friends, were in reality at the mercy of numbers. Into such company, exclaims our noble writer, was I fallen for my sins. Still, however, he went on, steering in the wide ocean without a compass, till the death of Lewis XIV. and the arrival of the Duke of Ormond at Paris rendered all his endeavours abortive: yet, notwithstanding these unfavourable circumstances, he still continued to dispatch several messages and directions for England, to which he received very evasive and ambiguous answers. Among the number of these, he drew up a paper at Chaville, in concert with the Duke of Ormond, Marshal Berwick, and De Torcy, which was sent to England just before the death of the King of France, representing that France could not answer the demands of their memorial, and praying directions what to do. A reply to this came to him through the French Secretary of State, wherein they declared themselves unable to say any thing, till they saw what turn affairs would take on the death of the King, which had reached their ears. Upon another occasion a message coming from Scotland to press the Chevalier to hasten their rising, he dispatched a messenger to London to the Earl of Mar, to tell him that the concurrence of England in the insurrection, was ardently wished and expected: but, instead of that Nobleman's waiting for instructions, he had already gone into the highlands, and there actually put himself at the head of his clans. After this, in concert with the Duke of Ormond, he dispatched one Mr. Hamilton, who got all the papers by heart, for fear of a miscarriage, to their friends in England, to inform them, that though the Chevalier was destitute of succour, and all rea sonable hopes of it, yet he would land as they pleased in England or Scotland at a minute's warning; and therefore they might rise immediately after they had

sent dispatches to him. To this message Mr. Hamilton returned very soon with an answer given by Lord Lansdowne, in the name of all the persons privy to the secret, that, since affairs grew daily worse, and would not mend by delay, the malcontents in England had resolved to declare immediately, and would be ready to join the Duke of Ormond on his landing; adding, that his person would be as safe in England as in Scotland, and that in every other respect it was better he should land in England; that they had used their utmost endeavours, and hoped the Western counties would be in a good posture to receive him; and that he should land as near as possible to Plymouth. With these assurances the Duke embarked, though he had heard before of the seizure of many of his most zealous adherents, of the dispersion of many more, and the consternation of all; so that upon his arrival at Plymouth, finding nothing in readiness, he returned to Britany. In these circumstances the Pretender himself sent to have a vessel got ready for him at Dunkirk, in which he went to Scotland, leaving Lord Bolingbroke all this while at Paris, to try if by any means some assistance might not be procured, without which all hopes of success were at an end. It was during his negotiation upon this miserable proceeding, that he was sent for by Mrs. Trant (a woman who had for some time before ingratiated herself with the Regent of France, by supplying him with mistresses from England) to a little house in the Bois de Boulogne, where she lived with Mademoiselle Chausery, an old superannuated waiting-woman belonging to the Regent. By these he was acquainted with the measures they had taken for the service of the Duke of Ormond; although Bolingbroke, who was actual secretary to the negotiation, had never been admitted to a confidence in their secrets. He was therefore a little sur

prised

prised at finding such mean agents employed without his privity, and very soon found them utterly unequal to the task. He quickly therefore withdrew himself from such wretched auxiliaries, and the Regent himself seemed pleased at his defection.

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In the mean time the Pretender set sail from Dunkirk for Scotland; and though Bolingbroke had all along perceived that his cause was hopeless and his. projects ill designed; although he had met with nothing but opposition and disappointment in his service; yet he considered that this of all others was the time he could not be permitted to relax in the cause. He now therefore neglected no means, forgot no argument which his understanding could suggest, in apарplying to the court of France; but his success was not answerable to his industry. The King of France, not able to furnish the Pretender with money himself, had written some time before his death to his grandson the King of Spain, and had obtained from him a promise of forty thousand crowns. small part of this sum had been received by the Queen's Treasurer at St. Germains, and had been sent to Scotland, or employed to defray the expences which were daily making on the coast; at the same time Bolingbroke pressed the Spanish Ambassador at Paris, and solicited the minister at the court of Spain. He took care to have a number of officers picked out of the Irish troops which serve in France, gave them their routes, and sent a ship to receive and transport them to Scotland. Still however the money came in so slowly, and in such trifling sums, that it turned to little account; and the officers were on their way to the Pretender. At the same time he formed a design of engaging French privateers in the expedition, that were to have carried whatever should be necessary to send to any part of Britain in their first voyage, and then to cruize under the Pretender's commission. He had actually agreed for some, and