And again, when the windows at the embassy had been
broken by a young English Jacobite, who was forthwith committed to Fort
l'Eveque, the hare-brained marquis proposed, out of revenge, to break
them a second time, and only abandoned the project because he could get
no one to join him in it. Lord Stair, however, had too much sense to be
offended at the follies of a boy of seventeen, even though that boy was
the representative of a great English family; he, probably, thought it
would be better to recall him to his allegiance by kindness and advice,
than, by resenting his behaviour, to drive him irrevocably to the
opposite party; but he was doubtless considerably relieved when, after
leading a wild life in the capital of France, spending his money
lavishly, and doing precisely everything which a young English nobleman
ought not to do, my lord marquis took his departure in December, 1716.
The political education he had received now made the unstable youth
ready and anxious to shine in the State; but being yet under age, he
could not, of course, take his seat in the House of Lords. Perhaps he
was conscious of his own wonderful abilities; perhaps, as Pope declares,
he was thirsting for praise, and wished to display them; certainly he
was itching to become an orator, and as he could not sit in an English
Parliament, he remembered that he had a peerage in Ireland, as Earl of
Rathfernhame and Marquis of Catherlogh, and off he set to see if the
Milesians would stand upon somewhat less ceremony.
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