^ Harper's Stereotype Eaitton, LIFE AND TIMES OF HIS LATE MAJESTY GEORGE THE FOURTH. ANECDOTES OF DISTINGUISHED PERSONS OF THE LAST FIFTY YEARS. BY THE REV. GEORGE CROLY. NEW AND IMPROVED EDITION. N EW-YORK: PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NO, 82 CLIFF-STREET. 184 2. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. The Brunswick Line * • . 9 CHAPTER n. Birth of the Prince • 15 CHAPTER HI. The Prince's Eeucation 22 Public Schools. Cyril Jackson. Character of Swift. CHAPTER IV. The Prince's Establishment . 30 Character of Lord North's Administration. Colonel de la Motte, the French Spy. Manners in England at the beginning of the French Revolution. European Discoveries in Science. CHAPTER V. The Prince's Embarrassments ....... 45 Eloquence of Fox and Sheridan. CHAPTER VL The Prince's Friends 55 Anecdotes of Pitt. The Pavilion. Sir Richard Hill and the Rolliad. Political Character of Fox. Literary Society of Frederic the Great. AS VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. PASE The Prince's Friends 83 Bons-mots of Hare, Fox, Sir John Doyle,Curran^ Sheridan, the Prince, &c. Character of Erskine. Bons-mots of Arthur O'Leiary. Rise of Bishop O'Beime. Flood, Grattan. Character of Irish Eloquence. Character of Sheridan's Wit and Eloquence. Story of Morgan Prussia. Burke as a Parliamentary Speaker. Colonel Fitzpatrick's Poetry. Junius and Sir Philip Francis. CHAPTER VIII. The Illness of George the Third . . . . . 134 Mrs. Fitzherbert. Character of Lord Thurlow. Burke's celebrated Letter. Poem on the Irish Delegates. CHAPTER IX. The Prince's Marriage 168 The Duke of Orleans. Death of the Duke of Lauzun. Dutchesses of Devonshire, Gordon, and Rutland. Ode to the Dutchess of Rutland. CHAPTER X. Ihe Royal Separation 191 The Lennox Duel. Lady Jersey, Dr. Randolph, and the Princess' Letters. CHAPTER XI The French Revolution ...•.•,,, 305 The Volunteers of England. The Prince's Offer of Service. CONTENTS. VU CHAPTER XII. PAGE Paeliament 222 The Deaths of Burke, Pitt, and Fox. Lord Erskine's Character of Fox. The Abolition of the Slave-trade. The Slave-traders, France, Spain, and Portugal. CHAPTER XIII. The Whig Cabinet 237 Lord Grenville's Auditorship of the Exchequer. Lord Ellenborough in the Cabinet. Lord Yarmouth's Negotiation M^ith Talleyrand. Canning's Satire on " All the Talents." CHAPTER XIV. The Spanish War 253 The Berlin and Milan Decrees. Napoleon at Erfurt. Moore's Retreat to Corunna. Lords Stewart and Paget's Defeat of the French Guard. CHAPTER XV. The Regency . 269 Character of George the Third. The Prince's Letter on the Regency. Assassination of Mr. Perceval. CHAPTER XVL The British Empire .......... 286 CHAPTER XVIL Queen Caroline • 304 Sir Walter Scott — The Coronation. VIU CONTENTS. . CHAPTER XVIII. PAGE Napoleon ... 318 Waterloo. French Anecdotes. CHAPTER XIX. The Reign 337 The Battle of Algiers. The Panic. Death of Lord Liverpool. Death of Mr^ Canning. CHAPTER XX. The Catholic Qitestion . , 346 The WeUington Ministry. Speeches of Messrs. Peel, Dawson, &c. Protestant Defence of Idolatry. Death of Lloyd, Bishop of Oxford. Death of his Majesty. APPENDIX: Containing Anecdotes of George IV., his present Majesty Queen Adelaide, &c. &c. A MEMOIR OF THE LIFE OF GEORGE THE FOURTH. CHAPTER I. The Brunswick Line. The origin of the Brunswick Family is lost in the' fabulous ages of the north. The first occurrence of the name has been dimly traced by the German antiquaries to the invasion of the Roman empire under Attila, in the middle of the fifth century. Among the tribes which that almost universal chief- tain poured down upon Italy, the Scyrri (Hirri or Heruli) are found, whose king, Eddico, was sent as one of Attila's ambassadors to the court of Theodo- sius. The native country of the Scyrri was, like that of the principal invaders, in the north of Europe ; and they are supposed, on Pliny's authority, to have possessed the marshes of Swedish Pomerania, and some of the islands near the mouth of the Baltic. On the sudden death of Attila and the dismember- ment of his conquests, the Scyrri seized upon a large tract bordering on the Danube. But the possession was either too tempting or too carelessly held, to be relinquished without a struggle by the fierce chief- tains, who, in returning from Italy, had seen the fer- tility of Pomerania. The Scyrri were involved in 1ft GEORGE THE FOURTH. a furious war, which seems to have spread from the Adriatic to the Euxine. The calamities of Rome were mercilessly revenged by the wounds inflicted in this mutual havoc of her conquerors ; and in one of those battles, in which extermination or victory was the only alternative, the tribe of the Pomera- nian Scyrri were totally cut off, with Eddico, their king-, ar their head, and Guelph, his son, or brother, whose name is then first heard in history. But the fortunes of the Scyrri were destined to be rapidly revived by one of the most singular and for- tunate conquerors of a time remarkable for striking" changes of fortune. A remnant of the tribe, unable or unwilling to follow their king in the Roman inva- sion, had, by remaining in Pomerania, escaped the general extinction. Odoacer, the son of the fallen king, put himself at their head, and marched from the Baltic to revenge the slaughter of his country- men. Like many of the northern chieftains, he had been educated, probably as a hostage, in the Roman camps, and had been familiar with the habits of the accomplished but profligate court of the Western Empire. His address and valour raised him to the command of the German troops in the service of the throne. Some slight which he received from Ores- tes, his former general, but now the father of the emperor ; or, more probably, his own lofty and daring ambition, stimulated him to the seizure of a diadem disgraced by the feebleness of its possessor. Sword in hand, he forced Augustulus to abdicate ; and, under the name of the Patrician, Odoacer a-scended the throne of the Cesars. Power won by the sword is naturally lost by the sword ; and Theodoric, the Goth, disputed the sove- reignty. After a succession of battles, in which the courage and military skill of Odoacer earned the praise of history, artifice circumvented the soldier ; he was assassinated at a banquet, within ten years of his triumph, his dynasty extinguished, and hia THE BRUNSWICK LINE. 11 tribe, with his brother Guelph at their head, driven out once more to create a kingdom for themselves by their valour. But this expulsion was the true origin of that singular fortune by which the Guelphic blood has been the fount of sovereignty to the most renowned quarters of Europe. Guelph (variously called Anulphus, Wulfoade, and Onulf,) saw, with a soldier's eye, the advantage which a position in the Tyrolese hills gave to the possessor, for the purposes of invasion or defence. Expelling the Roman colonists, he established his kingdom in the mountains, formed alliances with the neighbouring tribes, and, looking down upon Ger- many on one side, and upon the loveliness and mag- nificence of Italy on the other, calmly prepared his people for future supremacy.* Without following the progress of this distin- guished line through the conflicts of the dark ages, and the restless revolutions of power in the Italian sovereignties ; we come to the authorized conclusion, that the house of Brunswick have held rank among the German princes for six hundred years. From George the First the ascent is clear up to the first Duke of Brunswick and Lunenburg, who re- ceived his investiture from the Emperor Frederick the Second in the middle of the 13th century. Still, this investiture was less an increase of honours than a shade on the ancient splendour of a family, whose dominions had once numbered Bavaria and Saxony, then of the size of kingdoms, and whose influence was felt from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. But the direct male line of the Brunswick princes is Italian. The marquises or sovereigns of Este, Liguria, and perhaps of Tuscany, were among its first branches. "In the eleventh century the primitive stem was divided into two. The elder migrated to the banks * Halliday's AiuiaJa Of the House of Hanover. 12 GEORGE THE FOURTH. of the Danube and the Elbe ; the younger more humbly adhered to the shores of the Adriatic. The dukes of Brunswick and the kings of Great Britain are the descendants of the first : the dukes of Fer- rara and Modena are the offspring of the second."* A singular compact in the sixteenth century added to the celebrity of the house of Brunswick Lunen- burg. William, the reigning duke, fourth son of Ernest, who had obtained for himself a title more illustrious than that of thrones, the Confessor, by his support of the great Protestant Confession of Augsburg ; had left fifteen children, seven of whom were sons. The young princes, on the death of their father in 1593, resolved, for the purpose of keeping up their house in undiminished dignity, that but one of them should marry: the marriage to be decided by lot, and the elder brother io have the undivided inheritance and be succeeded by the next surviver. The lot was drawn by the sixth brother, George, who married Ann Eleanora, daughter of the Landgrave of Hesse Darmstadt, by whom he had five children. The compact was solemnly kept by the brothers, and drew so much notice by its romantic fidelity, that the Sultan Achmet the First pronounced it "worth a man's while to take a journey through Europe to be an eye-witness of such wonderful brotherly affection and princely honour." The accession of George the Third to the throne of these realms was welcomed by the whole British empire. The difficulties which had thwarted the popularity of his two immediate predecessors were past ; the party of the exiled dynasty had been wasted away by time, or alienated by the proverbial selfish- ness and personal folly of the Stuarts ; a war was just closed, in which all the recollections of England * Gibbon's Posthumoua Works. THE BRUNSWICK LINE 13 were of triumphs and territories won from the habit- ual disturber of Europe ; commerce was rising from the clouds always thrown round it by war, but rising with a strength and splendour unseen before, shoot- ing over the farthest regions of the world those beams which are at once light and life, brightening and developing regions scarcely known by name, and filling their bosom with the rich and vigorous fertility of European arts, comforts, and knowledge. All the acts of the young king strengthened the national good- will. His speech from the throne was deservedly applauded as the dictate of a manly and generous heart ; and this characteristic was made a wise topic of congratulation in the corresponding addresses of the people. " It is our peculiar happi- ness," said the London Address, "that your Majesty's heart is truly English ; and that you have discovered in your earliest years the warmest affection to the laws and constitution of these kingdoms." i An expression in the king's address to the privy council was seized with peculiar avidity as a proof alike of his head and heart. " I depend," said he, on the support of every honest man,^^ — a sentiment which united republican simplicity with kingly honour. He prohibited the court flattery then cus- tomary in the pulpit to the sovereign, reprimanding "Wilson, one of his chaplains, in the expressive words, — " That he came to church to hear the praises of God, and not his own." The independence of the judges was among his first objects ; and on the dis- solution of parliament he consummated the national homage, by forbidding all ministerial interference in the elections, and magnanimously declaring that *' He would be tried by his country." I The royal marriage now became a consideration of public importance. A bride was sought among the immediate connexions of the Royal Family, and the Princess Dowager proposed Sophia Charlotte, daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz. 14 GEORGE THE FOURTH* Lord Harcourt was made the bearer of the proposal, which was unhesitatingly accepted. The future queen arrived at St. James's on the 8th of Septem- ber, 1761. At nine on the same evening, with the formal rapidity of court marriages, she was wedded; and from that time, through half a century, became an object of interest and respect to the British na- tion. It was one of the striking features of the Hanover line, that it for the first time united the blood of the four races of kings, — the British, the Cambro-British, the Scottish, and the English ; deducing the succes- sion from Cadwaldr, last king of the Britons, through the seventeen princes of Wales, to Guledys Ddu, sister and heiress of Dafydd, married to Ralph Mor- timer, and thence through 19. Roger, their son. 20. Edmund Mortimer, his son. 21. Roger, son of Edmund, first Earl of March. 22. Edmond, son of Roger, married to Philippa, daughter and heiress of Lionel, Duke of Clarence^ third son of Edward the Third. 23. Roger, their son. 24. Anne, daughter and heiress of Roger, married to Richard of Conisburg, Earl of Cambridge. 25. Richard, Duke of York, their son. 26. Edward the Fourth, eldest son of Richard. 27. Elizabeth, Edward's eldest sister, married to Henry the Seventh. 28. Margaret, their eldest daughter, married to James the Fourth of Scotland. 29. James the Fifth of Scotland, their son. 30. Maryj Queen of Scots, daughter of James. 31. James the First of England, son of Mary, by Lord Darnley. 32. Elizabeth, daughter of James, married to Fre- derick, Elector Palatine. 33. Sophia, their daughter, married to Ernest Au- gustus, Elector of Hanover. 1762. J BIRTH OF THE pRiNCE. 15 34. George the First, their son. 35. George the Second, his son. 36. Frederick, Prince of Wales, son of George the Second. 37. George the Third, his son. 38. George the Fourth, his son.* CHAPTER II. Birth of the Prince. On the 12th of August, the birth of the heir-ap- parent was announced; her Royal Highness the Princess Dowager of Wales, the ladies of her ma- jesty's bedchamber, and the chief lords of the privy council, being in attendance. On this occacion the king's popularity, indepen- dently of the great interests connected with the royal succession, had excited the most universal public feeling. As the time of the queen's accouchement drew nigh, the national anxiety increased. It was raised to its height by the intelligence, on the eve- ning of the 11th, that her majesty's illness was im- mediately at hand. The great officers of state were now ordered to await the summons in the neighbour- hood of the royal bedchamber ; a precaution which sounds strangely to our ears, but which has been considered a matter of propriety, from the imputa- tions thrown on the birth of the son of James the Second. * " Yorke's Royal Tribes." Those who desire to search deeper into the antiquities of the Hanoverian line, may examine " Eccard's Ori- gines Guelficse," " Muratori's Antichita Estense," for the Italian branch ; and Sir Andrew Halliday's " Annals of the House of Hano ver," for a detail of. the various possessions and alliances of the northern. 16 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1762. The palace was crowded during the night. At four in the morning the Princess Dowager of Wales arrived. The queen had been taken slightly ill some time before. The great officers of state were in at- tendance in the anteroom of the royal chamber from five; and at twenty-four minutes past seven the joy- ful news was spread through the palace that an heir was born to the throne. The sound was caught with enthusiasm by the people, who had long since thronged the avenues of St. James's, was instantly conveyed through London, and was hailed by all as an event which accomplished the singular public prosperity of the new reign. On those occasions popular feeling delights in seiz- ing on every fortunate coincidence. The day was deemed auspicious, as the aimiversary of the Hano- ver succession. But a more direct popular triumph Occurred while the king was yet receiving the con- gratulations of the nobility. ' Of all wars, in those times, the most popular was a Spanish war ; and of all prizes, the most magnifi- cent was a Spanish galleon. The Hermione, one of those treasure-ships, sailing from Lima, had been taken in May, off Cape St. Vincent, by three English frigates. Rumour had exaggerated the wealth on board to the enormous sum of twelve millions ster- ling in silver, besides the usual precious merchandise from the Spanish settlements. But the actual trea- sure was immense ; the officers made fortunes, and even the share of a common sailor, though three crews were to divide the capture, was computed at nearly one thousand pounds. The chief cargo was silver, but many bags of gold were found hidden in the dollar chests, probably to evade some impost at Cadiz, which largely increased the value to the for- tunate captors. The wagons conveying the treasure had arrived in London on the night before, and were on this morning to have passed before the palace in their 1762.] BIRTH OF THE PRINCE. 17 way to the Tower. Almost at the moment of an- nouncing the royal birth, the cavalcade was seen en- tering- St. James's Street, escorted by cavalry and infantry with trumpets sounding, the enemy's flags waving over the wagons, and the whole surrounded by the multitude that such an event would naturally collect. The sudden spectacle (a striking and even tiiumphant one) led the king and the nobility to the palace windows. The news of th*^ prince's birth was now spread like flame ; and innumerable voices rose at once to wish the young heir prosperity. A Roman would have predicted, that an existence be- gun under such omens must close without a cloud. The king, in the flower of youth, and with the exulta- tion of a sovereign, and the still deeper delight of a father, was conspicuous in exhibiting his feeling of the public congratulation ; and the whole scene was long spoken of as one of the most natural and animated exhibitions of national joy known in the reign. George the Third had commenced his sovereignty with a manly and generous declaration of his pride in being born a Briton, — a declaration in which he had the more merit from its being his own, and from its being made in defiance of the cold-blooded states- manship which objected to it in the privy council, as a reflection on the Hanoverian birth of the two for- mer kings. The result showed the superior wisdom of a warm heart to a crafty head; for this single sentence superseded the popular memory of every other syllable in the royal speech, and became in- stantly the watchword of national affection to the throne. But the king followed the principle into the details of life. He loved to be a thorough Englishman. Like every man of sense, he scorned all affectation ; and, above all, scorned the affectation of foreign manners. The lisping effeminacy, the melancholy jargon, the French and German foppery of th« B2 18 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1762. miistached and cigaired race that the coffee-house life of the continent has propagated among us, would have found no favour in the eyes of this honest and high-principled king. Honour to God and justice to man, public respect for religion and private guidance by its spirit, public decorum and personal virtue, a lofty and generous zeal for the dignity of his crown and people, and a vigilant yet affectionate discipline in his family and household, were the characteristics of George the Third. But even in his royalty he loved to revive the simple customs of English do- mestic life : and his famous speech from the throne scarcely gave more national delight and assurance of an English heart, than the homely announcement, which followed in a few days after the queen's re- covery ; that the royal infant was to be shown in its cradle to all who called at the palace ; and that their majesties, after the old English custom, invited the visiters to cake and caudle. On the 17th of August, a few days after his birth, his royal highness had been created Prince of Wales by patent, in addition to that weight of honours which devolves on the heir of the British and Hano- verian sovereignties. The title of Prince of Wales was one of the trophies of the conquest of Llewellyn, and was originally conferred by the first Edward upon his son in 1284, investing him by cap, coronet, verge, and ring. The title is exclusively devoted to the eldest son of the throne, except where it has been en- grossed by the throne itself. The eldest son is also, as inheriting from the Scot- tish kings, hereditary Steward of Scotland, Duke of Rothsay, Earl of Carrick, and Baron of Renfrew ; titles conferred by Robert the Third, king of Scot- iand, on the prince his eldest son, in 1399 ; and ap- propriated for ever to the princes of Scotland from their birth. The heir-apparent is bom Duke of Cornwall, and possessor of the revenues of the dutchy. But it is 1762.] BIRTH OIF THE PRINCE. 19 singular that he has no Irish title, while all the junior branches of the royal family enjoy honours from Ire- land. Addresses rapidly flowed in from the leading pub- lic bodies : that of the city seemed to have imbodied the substance of the chief popular testimonials. After congratulating his majesty on the birth, it al- luded to the Hanover succession. " So important an event, and upon a day ever sacred to liberty, fills us with the most grateful sentiments to the Divine Goodness, which has thus early crowned your ma- jesty's domestic happiness, and opened to your peo- ple the agreeable prospect of permanence and sta- bility to the blessings which they derive from the wisdom and steadiness of your majesty's victorious reign." This was courteous. But the addresses of the clergy were observed to be generally in a higher tone; and the address of the clergy of the province of Canterbury was distinguished by a direct appeal to those great, doctrines on which the constitution stands. The king's answer was manly, and suitable to the free king of a free people. " He saw with pe- culiar pleasure their gratitude to Heaven for the birth of a Protestant heir. Their confidence in his fixed intention to educate the prince in every principle of civil and religious liberty, was truly acceptable to him ; and he desired them to rely upon him for ob- serving his pledges to the empire, and for leaving no- thing undone that could promote the sacred interests of Christian piety and moral virtue, and transmit to posterity our most happy constitution." The fickleness of popularity is the oldest lesson of public life : yet the sudden change of public feel- ing towards George the Third is among its most re- markable and unaccountable examples. No Euro- pean throne had been ascended for the last hundred years by a sovereign more qualified by nature and circumstances to win " golden opinions" from his people. Youth, striking appearance, a fondness not 20 GEORGE THE FOtJRTH. [1762. less for the gay and graceful amusements of court life than for those field sports which make the popu- lar indulgence of the English landholder, a strong sense of the national value of scientific and literary- pursuits, piety unquestionably sincere, and morals on which even satire never dared to throw a stain, were the claims of the king to the approbation of his people. In all those points also the contrast of the new reign with those of the two preceding monarchs was signally in its favour. Horace Walpole, a man rendered caustic by a sense of personal failure, and whose pen delighted to fling sarcasm on all times and men ; for once forgets his nature, and gives way to panegyric in speaking of the young king. " The new reign begins with great propriety and decency. There are great dignity and grace in the king's manner. I don't say this, like my dear Madame de Sevigne, because he was civil to me ; but the part is well acted. The young king has all the appearance of being amiable. There is great grace to temper much dignity, and a good nature which breaks out upon all occasions." The choice of Lord Bute as his prime minister tarnished all the king's qualities in the general eye. Insinuations that this handsome nobleman owed his rank at once to the passion of the princess dowager, and to arbitrary principles in the king, — insinuations never substantiated, and in their nature altogether improbable, — were enough to turn the spirit of that multitude who take their opinions from the loudest clamourer. Wilkes, a man broken in fortune, and still more broken in character, hopeless of returning to the ranks of honourable life, and both too noto- rious and too intemperate to be fit for any thing but faction, had been buoyed up into a bastard influence chiefly by the national jealousy of Scotland.* * " No petticoat government — no Scotch minister — and no Lord Seorge Sackville," were the watchwords of the time, placarded on the 1762.] mmit OF THE pitmcE. 51 But Lord Bute had soon ceased to be the ohject. A nobler quarry was found in the king. The " eagle towering in his pride of place, v/as by the mousing owl hawked at ;" and though not degraded in the opmion of men of honour and virtue, yet, with the multitude, his intentions were vilified, his personal qualities were turned into caricature, and his popu- larity was suddenly obscured, if not extinguished, by the arts of a demagogue, scandalous and criminal in every mode by which the individual can earn ex- clusion from society. Princes soon become public personages; and it cannot be denied that his royal highness displayed himself at a sufficiently early age ; for in 1765 he received a deputation from the Society of Ancient Britons, on St. David's day. The prince's answer to their address was certainly not long, for it was simply — " He thanked them for this mark of duty to the king, and wished prosperity to the charity." Though probably an earlier speech has been seldom made ; for the speaker was not quite three years old. But it was not lost on the courtiers. They declared it to have been delivered with the happiest grace of manner and action ; and that the features of future oratory were more than palpable : all which we are bound to believe. In December of the same year he was invested with the order of the garter, along with the Earl of Albemarle and the hereditary Prince of Brunswick. walls, and echoed by the mob : the three combining all the grievances of a party, afflicted by that most angry of all distempers— the desire ^o get into place. 22 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [177^. CHAPTER III. The Prince's Education. The prince had now reached a period when it be- came necessary to commence his education. Lord Holdernesse, a nobleman of considerable attain- ments, but chiefly recommended by his dignity of manner and knowledge of the court, was appointed governor : Dr. Markham and Cyril Jackson were the preceptor and sub-preceptor. Markham had attracted the royal notice by his celebrity as a schoolmaster. At the age of thirty he had soared to the height of professional glory ; for he was placed at the head of Westminster School, where he taught for fourteen years. The masters of the leading schools are generally cheered by some church dignity, and Markham received the deanery of Christ Church : from this he had been transferred to Chester ; and it was while he was in possession of the bishopric, that he was selected for the precep- torship of the Prince of Wales. But this private plan of education was .severely criticised. It was pronounced to be a secluded, soli- tary, and narrow scheme for court thraldom, fitter to make the future sovereign a bigot or a despot, than the generous and manly leader of a generous and manly people. The old controversy on the rival merits of public and private education was now revived ; and, to do the controversialists justice, with less of the spirit of rational inquiry than of fierce and prejudiced par- tisanship. The great schools were panegyrized, as breeding 1771. J THE PRINCE'S EDUCATION. 23 a noble equality among the sons of men of the va- rious ranks of society ; as inspiring those feelings of honour and independence, which in after-life make the man lift up his fearless front in the presence of his superiors in all but knowledge and virtue ; and as pre-eminently training the youth of the land to that personal resolution, mental resource, and intellec- tual dignity, which are essential to every honourable career; and are congenial, above all, to the free spirit and high-minded habits of England. All those advantages must be conceded, though burlesqued and tarnished by the fantastic and selfish tales of extraordinary facilities furnished to the man by the companions of the boy ; of the road to for- tune smoothed, the ladder of eminence miraculously placed in his grasp, the coronet, the mitre^, the high- est and most sparkling honours of statesmanship, held forth to the aspirant by the hand of early asso- ciation. — Hopes, in their conception mean, in their nature infinitely fallacious, and in their anticipation altogether opposed to the openness and manly self- respect, which it is the first duty of those schools to create in the young mind. Yet the moralist may well tremble at that contamination of morals which so often defies the vigilance of the tutor ; the man of limited income is entitled to reprobate the habits of extravagance engendered in the great schools; and the parent who values the affections of his chil- dren, may justly dread the reckless and unruly self- will, the young insolence, and the suUen and heart- less disdain of parental authority, which spring up at a distance from the paternal eye. But the question is decided by the fact, that without public education a large portion of the youth of England would re- ceive no education whatever; while some of the more influential would receive, in the feeble indul- gences of opulent parentage and the adulation of do- mestics, an education worse than none. The ad- vantages belong to the system, and to no other ; 24 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1771. while the disadvantages are accidental, and require notliing for their remedy beyond increased activity in the governors, and a more vigorous vigilance in the nation. But of the education of a British prince there can be no question. It ought to be in its whole spirit pubhc. Under all circumstances, the heir to a throne will find flatterers ; but at Eton, or Westminster, the flattery must be at times signally qualified; and his noble nature will not be the less noble for the home truths which no homage can always restrain among the rapid passions and fearless tongues of boys. The chance of his falling into the snares of early favouritism is trivial. School fondnesses are easily forgotten. But, if adversity be the true teacher of princes, even the secure heir to the luxurious throne of England may not be the worse for that semblance of adversity which is to be found in the straight-for- ward speech, and bold, unhesitating competitorship of a great English school. Under Lord Holdemesse and the preceptors, the usual routine of classical teaching was carefully in- <3ulcated, for Markham and Jackson were practised masters of that routine ; and the prince often after- ward, with the gratitude peculiarly graceful in his rank, professed his remembrance of their services. But, though the classics might flourish in the princely establishm.ent, it soon became obvious that peace did not flourish along with them. Rumours of discon- tent, royal, princely, and preceptorial, rapidly es- caped from even the close confines of the palace ; and, at length, the public, less surprised than per^ plexed, heard the formal announcement, that the whole preceptorship of his royal highness had sent in their resignations. Those disturbances were the first and the inevita- ble results of the system. Lord Holdemesse ob- scurely complained that attempts were made to ob- tain an illegitimate influence over the prince's mind. 1771.] THE prince's EDr cation. 25 Public rumour was active, as at all times, in throw- ing light on what the courtly caution of the noble governor had covered Avith shade. The foreign poli- tics of the former reigns, the Scotch premier, and the German blood of the queen, were easy topics for the multitude ; and it was loudly asserted, that the great object of the intrigue was to supersede the prince's British principles by the despotic doctrines of Hanover. Similar charges had occurred in the early life of George the Third. That prince's governors were alternately accused of infecting his mind with arbi- trary principles, and with a contempt for the royal authority ; with excessive deference to the princess his mother, in opposition to the due respect for the sovereign; and with an humiliating subserviency to the will of the sovereign, in neglect of the natural affec- tion for his mother. Preceptors had been successively dismissed; committees of inquiry held upon their conduct; books of hazardous political tendency, — Father Orleans' Revolutions of the House of Stuart, Ramsay's Travels of Cyrus, Sir Robert Filmer's "Works, and Pere Perefixe's History of Henry the Fourth, — ^had beenreckoned amongthe prince's pecu- liar studies ; and the whole scene of confusion ended, as might be expected, in the greater misfortune of Lord Bute's appointment to the governorship — an appoint- ment which gave a form and colour to all the popular discontents, alarmed the public friends of the con- stitution, furnished an unfailing fount at which every national disturber might replenish his eloquence, and for many years enfeebled the attachment of the empire to a king whose first object was the good of liis people. A new establishment of tutors was now to be formed for the Prince of Wales. It bore striking evidence of haste ; for Lord Bruce, who was placed at its head, resigned within a few days. Some ridi- cule was thrown on this rapid secession, by the C 26 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1771. Story that the young prince had thought proper to inquire into his lordship's attainments, and finding that the pupil knew more of classics than the master, had exhibited the very reverse of courtiership on the occasion. Lord Bruce was succeeded by the Duke of Montague ; with Hurd, Bishop of Litchfield, and the Reverend Mr. Arnald, as preceptor and sub- preceptor. The choice of the preceptors was harmless. Hurd was a man of feeble character, but of scholarship sufficient for the purpose. He contributed nothing to his profession but some " Sermons," long since past away ; and nothing to general literature but some " Letters on Chivalry," equally superseded by the larger research and manlier disquisition of our time. It had been his fortune to meet in early life with Warburton, and to be borne up into publicity by the strength of that singularly forcible, but unruly and paradoxical mind. But Hurd had neither inclination nor power for the region of the storms. When War- burton died, his wing drooped, and he rapidly sank into the literary tranquillity which, to a man of talents, is a dereliction of his public duty ; but to a man sti- mulated against his nature into fame, is policy, if not wisdom. Arnald was the prince's tutor in science. He had been senior wrangler at Cambridge, an honour which he had torn from Law, the friend of Paley, and brother of the late Lord EUenborough. It is a cu- rious instance of the impression that trifles wiU make, where they are not superseded by the vigorous and useful necessities of active life, to find the defeated student making a topic of his college overthrow to the last hour of his being. Not even Law's elevation to the opulent Irish bishopric of Elphin could make him forget or forgive the evil done at Cambridge to his budding celebrity. To the last he complained that the laurel had not fallen on the right head, that sorne unac- countable partiality had suddenly veiled the majestic 1771. j THE prince's education. 27 justice of Alma Mater, and that he must perish with- out adding the soUd glories of the wranglership to the airy enjoyments of the peerage and ten thousand pounds a-year. Lord North's spirit was peace, though plunged in perpetual quarrel at home and abroad, in the palace, in parliament, with the people, with the old world, and with the new. On this occasion he softened the irritation of the exiled governors and tutors by lavish preferment. The marquis of Carmarthen, married to Lord Holdernesse's daughter, obtained the appoint- ment, valuable to his habits, of Lord of the Bed- chamber ; Markham was made Archbishop of York ; and Cyril Jackson received the rich preferment of the deanery of Christ Church. Even Lord Brace's classical pangs were balmed by the earldom of Ayles- bury, an old object of his ambition. The name of Cyril Jackson still floats in that great limbo of dreams, college remembrance. He was Dean of Christ Church during twenty-six j^ears, and fulfilled the duties of his station, so far as superintend- ence was concerned. In this period he refused the Irish primacy — a refusal which was idly blazoned at the time as an act of more than Roman virtue. But heroic self-denial is rare among men ; and Jackson had obvious reasons for declining the distinction. His income was large, his labour light, and his time of life too far advanced to make change easy or dig- nified. Preferment in Ireland, too, is seldom a strong temptation to the opulent part of the English clergy. The remoteness from all their customary associations, and the perplexity of mingling among a new people, with new habits, and those not seldom hostile to the churchman, naturally repel the man of advanced life. The probability of being speedily forgotten by the great distributors of ecclesiastical patronage makes Irish preferment equally obnoxious to the younger aiergy who have any hopes at home. Swift's cor- 28 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1771. respondence is a continual complaint of the misfor- tune of having the channel between him and the life he loved ; and his language has been echoed by almost every ecclesiastic v^^ho has suffered his English inte- rest to be expended in Irish promotion. If Swift at length abandoned his complaints, it was only for revenge. He cured his personal querulous- ness by turning it into national disaffection. Gifted with extraordinary powers of inflaming the popular mind, he resolved to show the British government the error which they had committed in sending him into what he to the last hour of his life called " his banishment." In the fierce recollections and national misery of Ireland, then covered with the unhealed wounds of the civil war, and furious with confisca- tions and party rage, Swift found the congenial armory for the full triumph of imbittered genius. His sense of ministerial insult was balmed by being expanded into hatred to the English name. Despair- ing of court favour, his daring and unprincipled spirit made occupation for itself in mob patriotism. Swift's was the true principle for a great demagogue. From the time of his first drawing the sword he showed no wavering, no inclination to sheath it, no faint- hearted tendency to make terms with the enemy. He shook off the dust of his feet against the gates of England, and once excluded, never deigned ,to approach them again, but to call down the fires of popular hatred upon their battlements. Even at this distance of time, and with the deepest condemnation of Swift's abuse of his talents, it is difficult to look upon him without the reluctant admiration given to singular ability, and inflexible and inexorable resolve, let the cause be what it may. ' For good or evil he stood completely between the government and the nation. The shadow of this insolent and daring dictator extinguished the light of every measure of British benevolence, or transmitted it to the people distorted, and in colours of tyranny and blood : and 1771.] THE prince's education. 29 unquestionably, if popular idolatry could repay a human heart for this perpetual paroxysm of revenge, no idol ever enjoyed a thicker cloud of popular incense. Swift was the virtual viceroy, in whose presence the English representative of the monarch dwindled down into a cipher. And this extraordinary superiority was not a mere passing caprice of for- tune. Among a people memorable for the giddiness of their public attachments, his popularity continued unshaken through life. To the last he enjoyed his criminal indulgence in thwarting the British govern- ment ; exulted in filling with his own gall the bosoms of the generous, yet rash and inflammable race, whom he alternately insulted and flattered, but whom, in the midst of his panegyrics, he scorned ; libelled the throne, while he bore the sentence of court exile as the keenest suffering of his nature ; solaced his last interval of reason by an epitaph, which was a libel on the human species ; and died, revenging his imaginary wrongs, by bequeathing to the people a fierce and still unexpired inheritance of hatred against the laws, the institutions, and the name of England. Jackson, in 1809, finding age coming heavy upon him, resigned his deanery at sixty-four, and then had the merit, which deserves to be acknowledged, of feeling that there is a time for all things, and that man should interpose some space between public life and the grave. Refusing a bishopric, offered to him by his former pupil, the Prince Regent, the old man wisely and decorously retired to prepare himself for the great change. He lived ten years longer, chiefly in the village of Felpham, in Sussex, amusing himself by occasional visits to his old friends in London, or to the prince at Brighton, by whom he was always received with scarcely less than filial respect ; and then returning to his obscure, but amiable and meri- torious life of study, charity, and prayer. He died of a brief illness in 1819. C2 30 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [IT?? CHAPTER IV. The Prince's EstablishmenU The lavish distribution of patronage among the successive tutors and servants of the prince excited some angry remark, and much ridicule, at the time. But the minister rapidly overwhelmed this topic of public irritation by supplying the empire with injmies on a larger scale. North's propensity to govern by favours was the weakness of his nature ; and this weakness was soon urged into a diseased prodigality by the trials of his government. America had just taken the bold step of declaring her independence ;* France was almost openly pre- paring for war. • Every lurking bitterness of fancied wrong, or hopeless rivalry, throughout Europe, was starting into sudden life at the summons of America. The beacon burning on the American shores was re- flected across the Atlantic, and answered by a simi- lar blaze in every corner of the contment. Even at home, rebellion seemed to be rising, scarcely less in the measured hostility of the great English par- ties, than in the haughty defiance and splendid me- nace of Ireland, then half-phrensied with a sense of young vigour, and glittering in her first mail. Lord North was now at the head of the Treasury, and on him rested the whole weight of the British administration ; a burden too heavy for the powers of any one man, and in this instance less solicited by his own ambition than urged upon him by the royal command. The king, abandoned by the Duke of Grafton, insulted by Chatham, tyrannised over by the great party of the nobility, and harassed by the perpetual irritation of the people, had soon felt the severe tenure of authority ; and there were times * SeeNote I,— Page 412. 1777.] THE prince's establishment. 31 when, in mingled scorn and indignation, he was said to have thought of laying down the galling circle of an English crown, and retiring to Hanover. In this emergency his choice had fallen upon North, a man of rank, of parliamentary experience, and probably of the full measure of zeal for the public service, consistent with a personal career essentially of cau- tion, suspicion, and struggle ; — but of undoubted re- spect for his royal master, and loyal attachment to the throne. North had been all but born in the legislature, and all his efforts had been early directed to legislatorial distinction. " Here comes blubbering North," was the observation of some official person to George Grenville, as they saw the future premier in the Park, evidently in deep study. " I'll be hanged if he's not getting some harangue by heart for the House." He added, " that he was so dull a dog, that it could be nothing of his own." The latter re- mark, however, Grenville more sagaciously repelled, by giving tribute to North's parliamentary qualities, and saying, that, " If he laboured with his customary diligence, he might one day lead the councils of the country." But the injurious yet natural result of North's official education was, his conceiving that the empire must be prosperous so long as the minis- ter was secure, and that the grand secret of human government was a majority. At a distance of time, in which the clouds that then covered public affairs with utter mystery have melted away, we can discover that the minister, with all his intrepidity, would gladly have taken refuge under any protection from the storm that was already announcing itself, as if by thunder-claps, round the whole national horizon. But the com.petitors for his power were too certain of possession to suffer him to take shelter among them ; and his only alterna- tive was to resign his place, or make a desperate use of the prerogative. Whatever may be the virtue of 32 George' THE poitrth. [1777 later ministers, the temptation would have been irre- sistible by any administration of the last century ; and we can scarcely blame North, so much as hu- man nature in his day, if he embraced the evil oppor- tunity in all its plenitude. Ten peers at once were called up to the English house. But it was in Ireland, a country then as much famed for the rapid production of patriotism and its rapid conversion to official zeal, as now for the more tangible product of sheep and oxen ; where the perpetual defalcation of revenue was proudly overpaid by the perpetual surplusage of orators ready to defend the right at all hazards and all salaries, and rally round government to its last shilling, — it was in Ireland, where the remoteness of the Trea- sury table seems never to have dulled the appetite of the guests for the banquet, that the minister dazzled the eyes of opposition at home, by the display of his unchecked munificence. One day, the 2d of July, 1777, saw the Irish peer- age reinforced by eighteen new barons, seven barons further secured by being created viscounts, and five viscounts advanced to earldoms! Against the wielder of patronage like this, what party fidelity could stand ? There never had been such a brevet in Ireland : and every man suddenly discovered the unrighteousness of resistance to a minister so gifted with wisdom, and the privilege of dispensing favours. The fountain of honour had often before flowed co- piously in ministerial emergencies ; but now, as one of the Irish orators said on a similar occasion, in the curious pleasantry of his country, " It flowed forth as freely, spontaneously, and abundantly as Holy- well, in Wales, which turns so many mills." It fairly washed Irish opposition away. In England it softened even the more stubborn material of opposi- tion to an extraordinary degree of plasticity. In the midst of popular outcry, the increase of public ex- penses, and disastrous news from America, the ad- dress was carried by a majority of three to one. 1781. J THE prince's establishment. 35 But a more powerful and inflexible antagonist than political partisanship soon rose against this feeble system of expedients ; public misfortune was against the ministry. The American revolt had rapidly grown from a scorned insurrection into a recognised war ; Washington's triumphs over the ignorance of a succession of generals, who should never have been trusted out of sight of Hyde Park, legitimated rebel- lion; and popular indignation at unexpected defeat turned round and revenged itself on the premier. In this emergency, North undoubtedly exhibited pow- ers which surprised and often baffled his parliamen- tary assailants. If fancy and facetiousness could have sustained an administration, his might have tri- umphed, for no man ever tossed those light shafts with more pungent dexterity. But his hour was come. Every wind that blew from America brought with it evil tidings for the minister. Opposition, pa- ralyzed by its first defeats, now started up into sui- den boldness. Every new disaster of the cabinet re- cruited the ranks of its enemies. There was trea- chery too witliin the camp. Every man who had any thing to lose provided for the future by abandon- ing the falling cause. Every man who had any thing to gain established his claim by more open hos- tility. The king alone stood firm. At length, worn out by this perpetual assault, North solicited leave to resign, left his power to be fought for by the parties that instantly sprang out of opposition; and, after one more grasp at office, which showed only how ineradicable the love of power is in the human heart, retired — to make apologues on political oblivion, and, like a sage of Indian fable, tell children that the world was governed bv sugar-plums, and that the sugar- Elums were always forgotten when their distributor ad no more to give. On the first of January, 1781, the prince, though but Uttle more than eighteen, had been declared of age, on the old ground that the heir-apparent knows * See Note H.— Pog-e 412. 34 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1781. no minority. A separate establishment, on a small scale, was assigned to him, and he was, for the first time, allowed to feel that the domestic discipline of Kew was about to be exchanged for the liberty suit- able to his age and station. The measure was be- ginning to form an angry topic; but it was acci- dentally extinguished by another which is given, as having attracted the whole curiosity of the time. This topic was the seizure of De la Motte, a French spy, of remarkable adroitness and some personal dis- tinction. De la Motte had been a colonel in the French regiment of Soubise, and behaved with gal- lantry on several occasions in the preceding war. On the peace, his regiment was reduced ; but a con- siderable estate falling to him, with the title of baron, he flourished for a while in Paris. Play, at length, broke down his resources ; and, at once to evade his creditors and to profit by the gaming propensities of this country, he fixed himself in London ; where, on the breaking out of the American war, he yielded to the temptation of acting as a private agent to the French ministry. An intercourse was soon esta- blished with a clerk in the navy department, through one Lutterloh, a German. This person figured as a country gentleman, of no slight importance. He took a villa at Wickham, near Portsmouth, to be on the spot for intelligence of the fleets : he lived showily, even kept a pack of hounds, and gave entertainments, by which he ingratiated liimself with the resident gentry and ofiicers, and was considered a prodigious acquisition to the hilarity and companionship of the country. De la Motte remained in London, attract- ing no attention, but busily employed in forwarding the information received from his confederate ; untO. full information of his treason reached government, a messenger was despatched for him, who found him tranquilly studying at his lodgings in Bond Street, and conveyed him to the secretary of state's ofiice, then in Cleveland Row. He was evidently taken by 1781.] THE prince's establishment. 35 surprise, for he had his principal papers about his person, and could find no better way to get rid of them than by dropping them on the stairs of the of- fice. They were of course immediately secured, and given to the secretary, Lord Hillsborough. His dili- gence as a spy was sufficiently proved by their value. They contained particular lists of all matters relating to the British dock-yards, the force and state of every ship, with their complements of men at the time of their sailing ; and his accuracy was urged so far as even to details of the number of seamen in the va- rious naval hospitals. An order was now issued for Lutterloh's appre- hension. He was found following the usual easy pursuits of his life, with his hunters and pack wait- ing for him, and his boots ready to be drawn on. The messengers prohibited his hunting for that day, and ordered him to deliver the keys of his desks, "where they found but money, cash and bills for 2001. ; but on looking more carefully at the bills, they per- ceived that they were aU drawn payable to the same person, and dated on the same day, with those of the baron. Lutterloh now felt that he was undone, and offered to make a general disclosure of the trea- son. His garden was dug up, and a packet of papers was produced in his handwriting, the counterparts of those already seized on De la Motte. He ac- knowledged his employnient by the French minis- try, at the rate of fifty guineas a month ; and pointed out the inferior agents. Ryder, the clerk, who had furnished the principal intelligence, was next arrest- ed : this was the blackest traitor of them all ; for he was in the receipt of a pension of 200/. a-year, a consi- derable sum at that period, for services rendered in sounding the enemy's coasts, and had been put into . an office in the navy at Plymouth, where he was employed by the Admiralty in contriving signals, which signals, it appears, he immediately com- municated to the enemy. The last link was detected 36 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1781 In the conveyancers of the intelligence across the channel, Rougier, a Frenchman, and his mistress, by whom the letters were despatched by way of Mar- gate and Ostend. Tliis affair derived a peculiar public interest from the rumour that high names were behind the cur- tain, which the attorney-general's speech was deemed to substantiate, by his dwelling strongly upon the " very great and dangerous lengths" to which De la Motte's money and connexions enabled him to go. The attorney and solicitor-generals were employed by government, and the celebrated Dunning was counsel for the prisoner. The confession of Lutter- loh certainly showed an extraordinary command of information. He had been first employed by De la Motte, in 1778, to furnish the French ministers with secret intelligence of matters relating to the navy. His first allowance for this was trivial, — but eight guineas a month. But his information had soon be- come so valuable, that his allowance was raised to fifty guineas a month, besides occasional presents of money. He had been in Paris, and held conferences with De Sartine, the French naval minister. There he had struck a bold bargain, not simply for the casual returns of ships and dock-yards, but for whole fleets, ojffering a plan for the capture of Commodore Johnson's squadron, on condition of his receiving eight thousand guineas, and a third of the value of the sliips for himself and his associates. But the bargain was thrown up by the economy of the Frenchman, who hesitated at giving more than an eighth of the ships ! Offended by this want of due liberality in his old employers, he sought out new, and had offered a plan to Sir Hugh Palliser for taking the French fleet. Dumiing's cross-examina- tion of this villain was carried on with an indignant causticity which was long reckoned among his finest efforts. He tore the approver's character in pieces, but he could not shake his evidence. At length. 1783.] THE prince's establishment. 37 Dunning himself gave way ; he became exhausted with disgust and disdain : broke away from the court, and was taken home overpowered and seri- ously ill. Lutterloh was one of those specimens of desperate principle, restless activity, and perpetual adventure, which might have figured in romance. He had tried almost every situation of life, from the lowest ; he had been in various trades, and roved between France, England, and America, wl^'3rever there was money to be made by cunning or personal hazard. From the book-keeper of a Portsmouth inn, he had started into a projector of war; had offered his agency to the revolted colonies ; and as their chief want, in the early period of the struggle, was arms, he had gone to America with a plan for purchasing the arms in the magazines of the minor German states. The plan was discountenanced by Congress, and he returned to Europe, to engage in the secret agency of France, through the medium of De la Motte. RadclifFe, a smuggler, who had a vessel constantly running to Boulogne, was the chief carrier of the correspondence. His pay was 20/. a trip. Rougier, the carrier to Radcliffe, received eight guineas a month. Yet it is a striking instance of the blind security in which the most crafty may be involved, and of the impossibility of relying on traitors, that De la Motte's whole correspondence had for a long time passed through the hands of the English secretary of state himself; the letters being handed by Rad- chffe to a government clerk, who transmitted them to Lord Hillsborough, by whom again, after having taken copies of them, they were forwarded to their original destination ; and, thus anticipated, had un- doubtedly the effect of seriously misleadmg the French ministry. De la Motte was executed. As the Prince was now to take his place in the D 38 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1783. legislature, arrang-ements were commenced for sup- plying him with an income. The times were hostile to royal expenditure, and the king, for the double reason of avoiding any unnecessary increase to the public burdens, and of discouraging those propen- sities which he probably conjectured in the prince, demanded but 50,000/. a year, to be paid out of the civil list. The proposition was strongly debated in the cabinet, loag given down to scorn by the name of the Coalition CaMnet, and Fox insisted on making the grant 100,000L a year. But his majesty was firm, and the ministry were forced to be content with adding 40,000Z. and a complimentary message, to the 60,000Z. for outfit proposed by the king. The Duke of Portland, on the 23d of June, brought down the following message to the lords. " G. R. His majesty, having taken into considera- tion the propriety of making an immediate and se- parate establishment for his dearly beloved son, the Prince of Wales, relies on the experience, zeal, and affection of the house of lords, for their concurrence in, and support ofj such measures as shall be most pro- per to assist his majesty in this design." The question was carried without a dissenting voice in the lords ; and the commons voted the sums of 50,000Z. for income, and 100,000/. for the outfit of the P rince's household. Now fully began his check- ered career. There are no faults that we discover with more proverbial rapidity than the faults of others; and none that generate a more vindictive spirit of virtue, and are softened down by fewer attempts at pallia- tion, than the faults of princes in the grave. Yet, without j ustice, history is but a more solemn libel ; and no justice can be done to the memory of any public personage without considering the peculiar circum- ^ stances of his time. The close of the American war was the com- mencement of the most extraordinary period of 1783.] THE prince's establishment. 39 modern Europe : all England, all France, the whole continent, were in a state of the most powerful excite- ment : England, rejoicing at the cessation of hostili- ties, long unpopular and galling to the pride of a country accustomed to conquer; yet with the stain of transatlantic defeat splendidly effaced by her tri- umph at Gibraltar, and the proof given in that memo- rable siege of the unimpaired energies of her naval and military power, — France, vain of her fatal suc- cess, and exulting in the twofold triumph of wrest- ing America from England,* and raising up a new rival for the sovereignty of the seas, — the continental states, habitually obeying the impulses of the two great movers of the world, England and France, and feeling the return of life in the new activity of all interests, public, personal, and commercial. But a deeper and fearful influence was at work, invisibly, but resistlessly, inflaming this feverish vividness of the European mind. The story of the French Revolution is still to be told ; and the man by whom that tale of grandeur and atrocity is told, will bequeath the most appalling les- son ever given to the tardy wisdom of nations. But the first working of the principle of ruin in France was brilliant ; it spread a universal anima- tion through the frame of foreign society. All was a hectic flush of vivacity. Like the Sicilian land- scape, the gathering fires of the volcano were first felt in the singular luxuriance and fertility of the soil. Of all stimulants, political ambition lays the strong- est hold on the sensibilities of man. The revolu- tionary doctrines, still covered with the graceful robes of patriotism and philosophy, seemed to have led the whole population of France into enchanted ground. Every hour had its new accession of light ; every new step displayed its new wonder. Court formality — hereditary privilege — the solemnity of the altar — all that had hitherto stood an obstacle to ihe full indulgence of natural impulses, all the rigid * See Note m.—Pase 413. 40 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1783. and stately barriers established by the wisdom of elder times against popular passion, were seen sud- denly to shrink and fade away before the approach of the new regeneration, like mists before the sun- beams. The listless life of the man of rank was sud- denly supplied with an excitement that kindled all the latent activities of his nature ; the man of study found, with delight, his solitary speculation assum- ing a life and substantial shape before his eye, and the long arrears of fortune about to be paid in public fame and power ; the lower classes listened with fierce avidity to the declaration, that thg time was at hand for enjoying their share of that opulent and glittering world on which they had hitherto gazed, with as little hope of reaching it as the firmament above their heads. Thus was prepared the Revolution. Thus was Jaid under the foundation of the throne a deadly compound of real and fantastic injury, of offended virtue and imbittered vice, of the honest zeal of ge- neral good, and the desperate determination to put all to hazard for individual license, rapine, and revenge, — a mighty deposite and magazine of explosion, long visible to the eyes of Europe, invisible to the French government alone, and which only waited the first touch of the incendiary to scatter the monarchy in fragments round the world. " Philosophy" was the grand leader in this pro- gress of crime ; and it is a striking coincidence, that at this period its title to national homage should have been, as if by an angry destiny, suffered to aid its popu- lar ambition, Europe never teemed with more illus- trious discoveries : the whole range of the sciences, from the simplest application of human ingenuity up to the most sublime trials of the intellect, found enthusiastic and successful votaries : the whole cir- cle was a circle of living flame. The French philo- sophers collected the contributions of all Europe, and| by imbodying them in one magnificent work, 1783.] THE prince's establishment. 41 claimed for themselves the peculiar guardianship and supremacy of human genius. Law, policy, and reli- gion had long possessed their codes: the French philosophers boasted that in the "Encyclopedic" they had first given the code of science. With all our hatred of the evil purposes of Diderot and D'Alembert, and all our present scorn of the delusions which their fierce malignity was devised to inflict npon mankind, it is impossible to look upon their labours without wonder. France had within a few years outstripped all competition in the higher branches of mathematical learning, a pursuit emi- nently fitted to the fine subtlety of the national ge- nius: but she now invaded the more stubborn pre- cincts of English and German research; seized upon chymistry and natural history ; and, by the success of Lavoisier and Buffbn, gave science a new and eloquent power of appeal to the reason and imagi- nation of man. A multitude of minor triumphs, in the various pro- vinces of invention, sustained the general glow of the scientific world ; but all were to be extinguished, or rather raised into new lustre, by three almost con- temporaneous discoveries, which to this hour excite astonishment, and which at some future time, decreed for the sudden advancement of the human mind to its full capacity of knowledge, may be among the noblest instruments of our mastery of nature. Those three were, Franklin's conductors, Montgol- fier's balloon, and Herschel's Georgium Sidus. Never was there an invention so completely adapted to inflame the most fantastic spirit of a fantastic people as the balloon. It absolutely crazed all France — • king, philosophers, and populace. The palpable powers of this fine machine, its beauty as an object, the theatrical nature of the spectacle presented at the ascents, the brilliant temerity of the aerial naviga- tors, soliciting the perils of an untried element, and rising to make the conquest of an unexplored region D2 42 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1783. in a floating " argosie" of silk and gold, rich as the pavilions of a Persian king, filled the quick fancy of France with dreams. A march to the moon, or a settlement among the stars, was scarcely too high for the national hope. The secrets of the atmos- phere were only lingering for French discovery ; but the immediate propagation of the French name and power through the earth was regarded less as a pro- bable achievement than as an inevitable result of this most dazzling of all inventions.* Among the innumerable observations to which those discoveries gave rise, it was remarked that there was something of curious appropriateness in their respective countries. — That the young audacity of America claimed the seizure of the Hghtning ; a sentiment not forgotten in Franklin's motto : " Eripiiit ccelo flilmen, sceptrumque tyrannis." That the balloon was an emblem of the showy vola- tility and ambitious restlessness of France ; — ^while the discovery of a new planet, the revelation of a new throne of brightness and beauty in the firma- ment, was not unsuited to the solemn thought and religious dignity of the people of England. But to England was given the substantial triumph ; Cook's southern discoveries were made in this era ; and the nation justly hailed them, less as cheering proofs of British intelligence and enterprise, than as a great providential donative of empire — dominion over realms without limit, and nations without num- ber, — a new and superb portion of the universe, un- veiled by science, and given into the tutelar hand of * The topic superseded all others for the time. The answer of one .©f the city members to Lord Mansfield was a long-standing jest against the city. The earl, meeting him immediately on his return from France, asked, " Was the Anglomanie as prevalent as ever ?" The honest citi sen not recognising the word, and conceiving that France could furnish but onie theme, answered, " that Anglomanies were to be seen every day in some part of Paris, and that he had seen a prodigious one go up o» tha day he left it." 1783.] THE prince's establishment. 43 the British people, for the propagation of British arts "«,nd arms through the world, and for an eternal repo- pitory of our laws, our literature, and our religion. The peace of 1782 threw open the continent ; and it was scarcely proclaimed, when France was crowded with the English nobility. Versailles \v:is the centre of all that was sumptuous in Europe. The graces of the young queen, then in the pride of youth and beauty ; the pomp of the royal 'family and the noblesse ; and the costliness of the fetes and celebrations, for which France has been always fa- mous, rendered the court the dictator of manners, morals, and politics, to all the higher ranks of the civilized world. But the Revolution was now has- tening with the strides of a giant upon France ; the torch was already waving over the chambers of this morbid and guilty luxury. The corrective was ter- rible : history has no more stinging retrospect than the contrast of that brilliant time with the days of shame ^ and agony that followed — the untimely fate of beauty," birth, and heroism, — the more than serpent-brood that started up in the path which France once emulously covered with flowers for the step of her rulers, — the hideous suspense of the dungeon, — the heart-broken farewell to life and royalty upon the scaffold. But France was the grand corrupter ; and its supremacy must in a few years have spread incu- rable disease through the moral frame of Europe. The Englishmen of rank brought back with them its dissipation and its infidelity. The immediate cir- cle of the English court was clear. The grave vir- tue of the king held the courtiers in awe : and the queen, with a pious wisdom for which her name should long be held in honour, indignantly repulsed every attempt of female levity to approach her pre- sence. But beyond this sacred circle the influence of foreign association was felt through every class of society. The great body of the writers of Eng- land, the men of whom the indiscretions of the 44 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1783.' higher ranks stand most in awe, had become less the guardians than the seducers of the public mind. The " Encyclopedic," the code of rebellion and irre- ligion stiU more than of science, had enlisted the majority in open scorn of all that the heart should practise or the head revere ; and the Parisian athe- ists scarcely exceeded the truth, when they boasted of erecting a temple that was to be frequented by worshippers of every tongue. A cosmopolite infidel republic of letters was already lifting its front above the old sovereignties, gathering under its banners a race of mankind new to public struggle, — the whole secluded, yet jealous and vexed race of labourers in the intellectual field, — and summoning them to devote their most unexhausted vigour and masculine ambi- tion to the service of a sovereign, at whose right and left, like the urns of Homer's Jove, stood the golden founts of glory. London was becoming Paris in all but the name. There never was a period when the tone of our society was more polished, more ani- mated, or more corrupt. Gaming, horse-racing, and still deeper deviations from the right rule of life, were looked upon as the natural embellishments of rank and fortune. Private theatricals, one of the most dexterous and assured expedients to extinguish, first the delicacy of woman, and then her virtue, were the favourite indulgence ; and, by an outrage to Eng- lish decorum, which completed the likeness to France, women were beginning to mingle in public life, try their influence in party, and entangle their feebleness in the absurdities and abominations' of political intrigue. In the midst of this luxurious pe- riod the Prince of Wales commenced his public ca- reer. His rank alone would have secured him flat- terers ; but he had higher titles to homage. He wjis then one of the handsomest men in Europe ; his countenance open and manly; his figure tall, and strikingly proportioned ; his address remarkable for easy elegance, and his whole air smgulaily noble. 1787.] THE prince's embarrassments. 45 His contemporaries still describe him as the model of a man of fashion, and amusingly lament over the degeneracy of an age which no longer produces such men. But he possessed qualities which might have atoned for a less attractive exterior. He spoke the principal modern languages with sufficient skill ; he was a tasteful musician ; his acquaintance with English literature was, in early life, unusually accurate and ext'ensive ; Markham's discipline, and Jackson's scholarship, had given him a large portion of classi- cal knowledge ; and nature had given him the more important public talent of speaking with fluency, dignity, and vigour. Admiration was the right of such qualities, and we can feel no surprise if it were lavishly offered by both sexes. But it has been strongly asserted, that the temptations of flattery and pleasure were thrown ir his way for other objects than those of the hour; that his wanderings were watched by the eyes of politicians ; and that every step which plunged him deeper into pecuniary embarrassment was triumphed in, as separating him more widely from his natural connexions, and compelling him in his helplessness to throw himself into the arms of factions alike hostile to his character and his throne. CHAPTER V. 7%c Princess Frniharrassments. In 1787, the state of the prince's income began ta excite the anxious attention of parliament and the country. The allowance given three years before tad been found totally inadequate to his expenditure, 46 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1787. t and there was at length no resource but to apply to the nation. On the original proposal of 50,000Z. a-year, the " prince's friends," for he had already found political protectors, had strenuously protested against the narrowness of the sum. But the prince decorously reprehended their zeal, and declared his readiness to submit entirely to the will of his father, and his extreme reluctance to be the cause of any misunder- standing between the king and his ministers. Yet a short experience showed that the income was altogether inadequate to the expenses of Carl- ton House. The prince was now upwards of 150,000Z. in debt. His creditors, perhaps in some degree alarmed by the notorious alienation of the court, had begun suddenly to press for payment. The topic became painfully public ; the king was applied to, and by his command k full statement was laid be- fore him. But the result was a direct refusal to interfere, formally conveyed through the ministers. Family quarrels are proverbial for exhibiting errors on both sides ; and even the quarrel on this occasion, high as the personages were, made no exception to the rule. The prince was treated sternly ; in return, the prince acted rashly. The royal indignation might have been justly softened by recollecting the inex- perience, the almost inevitable associates, and the strong temptations of the heir-apparent ; and the measure ought to have been made an act of favour, which was so soon discovered to be an act of neces- sity. On the other hand, the prince, impetuously, on the day after the royal answer, broke up" his household, dismissed his officers in attendance, or- dered his horses to be sold, shut up every apartment of his palace not required for immediate personal accommodation, and commenced living the life of a hermit, which he called that of a private gentleman; his political friends, that of an ancient sage ; and the court, that of a young rebel. The decided impres- 1787.] THE PRINCE'S EMBARRASSMENTS. 47 sion on the king's mind was, that this sudden resolu- tion was suggested by individuals whose first object was to enlist the sympathies of the nation against the minister, and who also had no reluctance to see the king involved in the disgrace of his cabinet. A remarkable incident at this period made the aliena- tion palpable to the empire. Margaret Nicholson's attempt to assassinate the king,* an attempt which failed only from the accidental bending of the knife, had been immediately communicated to all the au- thorities, and the principal persons connected with the royal family, with but one exception. To the prince no communication was made. He heard it at Brighton, and hastened to Windsor, where he was re- ceived by the queen alone. The king was inacces- sible. But the system of seclusion was too little adapted to the g^eat party Avho had now totally engrossed the direction of the prince ; and too repulsive to the natural habits of rank and birth, to last long. The windows of Carlton House were gradually opened, and the deserted halls gave their pomps to the light once more. His advisers prompted him to strengthen his public influence by private hospitality; and, from all the records of those years, we must believe that no host possessed more abundantly the charm of giving additional zest to the luxuries of the banquet. He now began to give frequent entertainments ; from personal pleasure, the feeling grew into political in- terest ; and it was at length resolved, that the prince owed it to his own character to show that he was not afraid of public investigation. The opening of the budgetf was considered a proper time, and the subject was confided to the hands of Alderman Newnham, no orator, but a man of mer- cantile wealth and personal respectability. This advocate contented himself, in the first instance, * August 2, 1786. t April 20, 1787. 48 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1787. with a brief panegyric on the prince's efforts to meet his difficulties ; and a demand whether ministers in- tended to bring forward any proposition for retriev- ing his affairs. Concluding with the words, that "though the conduct of that illustrious individual under his diffi- culties reflected the highest honour on his charac- ter, yet nothing could be surer to bring indelible disgrace upon the nation, than suffering him to re- main any longer in his present embarrassed circum- stances." Pitt's reply was short but peremptory. " It was not his duty to bring forward a subject of the nature that had been mentioned, without his majesty's com- mands. It was not necessar)^ therefore, that he should say more, than that on the present occa- sion he had not been honoured with any such com- mand." The campaign was now fairly begun, and opposi- tion determined to crush the minister. Private meet- ings were held, friends were summoned, and the strength of parties was about to be tried in a shock which, in its results, might have shattered the con- stitution. Pitt's sagacity saw the coming storm, and he faced it with the boldness that formed a promi- nent quality of his great character. He sternly de- nounced the subject, as one not merely delicate but dangerous ; he warned the mover of this hazardous matter of the evils which rashness must produce ; and concluded a short but powerful address, by threat- ening to call for " disclosures which must plunge the nation into the most formidable perplexity." While the house were listening with keen anxiety to this lofty menace, and expecting on what head the light- nings were to be launched, Pitt renewed the charge, by turning full on the opposition bench, and declar- ing, that if the " honourable member should persist in his determination to bring his motion forward again> his majesty's government would be compelled 1787.] THE prince's embarrassments. 49 to take the steps which they should adopt ; and that, for his own part, however distressing it might be to his personal feelings, from his profound respect for the royal family, he had a public duty to discharge which he would discharge, freely, fairly, and uncon- ditionally." A succession of debates followed, in which the whole vigour of party, and no slight portion of its •virulence, were displayed. RoUe, the member for Devonshire, with a superabundant zeal, which ex- posed him naked to all the fiery wrath of Sheridan and Fox, and lifted him up as a general mark for the shafts of opposition wit, had imbodied Pitt's mysterious charge into " matters by which church and state might be seriously affected," — an allusion understood to refer \o the rumoured marriage of the prince with Mrs. Fitzherbert. Sheridai), with contemptuous pleasantry, denied the truth of the report, which, he said, " the slight share of understanding that nature had vouchsafed to ixlm, was altogether unable to comprehend ; though, to be sure, something of his ignorance might be ac- counted for by his not being peculiarly fond of put- ting himself in the established school for this kind of learning. Among all the shows to which curiosity had led him in the metropolis, he had unfortunately omitted the whispering gallery in the neighbourhood of Whitehall. He was also confident that there was a great deal of recondite knowledge to be picked up by any diligent student who had taken his degree on the back-stairs, and he duly commended the pro- gress the honourable gentleman had made in those profitable studies. For his own part, Heaven help him ! he had always found the treasury passages at best, cold, dark, and cheerless ; he believed the con- science as weU as the body might have a rheumatic touch ; and he acknowledged that he was never the better for the experiment. But where he had heard only the ominous cries and wailings of the wind ; the ears E 50 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1787 of Others, more happily disposed, might be more fortu- nate ; where he heard only the rage of Auster and Eurus, to others Auster might come ' the zephyr perfumed from my lady's bedchamber ;' and Eurus be the — ^'purpureo spirans ab ortu, eois, Eurus equis.' There the honourable gentleman and his friends might be regaled with those snatches and silver touches of melody, which < hey shaped and expanded into harmonies on so grand and swelling a scale, for the admiration of the house and the country." The house laughed, but Rolle's remarks had made an impression ; and Fox, who had been unaccounta- bly absent from the debates, was compelled to ap- pear : he now became the challenger in turn. — " He stood there prepared to substantiate every denial that had been made by his honourable friend (Sheridan). He demanded investigation. He defied the sharpest scrutiny, however envenomed by personal feelings, to detect in the conduct of the prince, as a gentle- man, or as the hope of an illustrious line, any one act derogatory to his character. He came armed with the immediate authority of his royal highness to assure the house, that there was no part of his conduct which he was either afraid or unwilling to have investigated in the most minute manner." x,^ This bold defiance, delivered with the haughtiest tone and gesture, raised a tumult of applause ; which was interrupted only by his suddenly fixing his eyes full on the minister ; and, as if he disdained to pour his vengeance on minor culprits, heaping the whole reprobation upon him, whom he intimated to be the origin of the calumny. " As to the allusions," said he, scornfully, " of the honourable member for Devon, of danger and so forth to church and state, I am not bound to under- stand them until he shall make them intelligible; but 1787.] THE prince's embarrassments. 51 I suppose they are meant in reference to that false- hood which has been so sedulously propagated out of doors for the wanton sport of the vulgar, and which I now pronounce, by whomsoever invented^ to be a miserable calumny, a low, malicious falsehood." — He had hoped, that in that house a tale, only fit to impose upon the lowest persons in the streets, would not have gained credit; but, when it appeared that an invention so monstrous, a report of what had not the smallest degree of foundation, had been circuited with so much industry as to make an impression on the mind of members of that house, it proved the extraordinary efforts made by the enemies of his royal highness to propagate the grossest and most malig- nant falsehoods, with a view to depreciate his charac- ter, and injure him in the opinion of the country. He was at a loss to imagine what species of party could have fabricated so base a calumny. Had there existed in the kingdom such a faction as an anti- Brunswick faction, to it he should have certainly im- puted the invention of so malicious a falsehood ; for he knew not what other description of men could hdiVe felt an interest in first forming and then circulat- ing, with more than orc?*nary assiduity, a tale in every particular so unfounded. His royal highness had au- thorized him to declare, that as a peer of parliament he was ready, in the other house, to submit to any the most pointed questions ; or to afford his majesty, or his majesty's ministers, the fullest assurances of the utter falsehood of the statement in question, which never had, and which common sense must see never could have, happened. After this philippic, to which Pitt listened with the utmost composure, but which produced an extraor- dinary interest in the house. Fox adverted to the original purpose of the application : " Painful and de- licate the subject undoubtedly was; but however painful it might be, the consequences were attributa- Dle solely to those who had it in their power to 62 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1787. supersede the necessity of the princess coming to parliament, to relieve him from a situation embar- rassing to himself and disgraceful to the country." This speech may be taken as a specimen of Fox's vituperative style, — the reiterated phrases of scorn, the daring defiance, and the reckless weight of con- tempt and condemnation, which he habitually flung upon his adversary. But the full effect can be con- ceived only by those who have heard this great speaker. His violent action, confused voice, and un- gainly form were forgotten, or rather, by one of the wonders of eloquence, became portions of his power. A strong sincerity seemed to hurry him along : his words, always emphatic, seemed to be forced from him by the fulness and energy of his feelings ; and in the torrent he swept away the adversary. This speech decided the question. Rolle still per- sisted in his alarms, and still brought down upon him- self the declamation of Sheridan and the retorts of Fox, who bitterly told him, that " though what he had said before was, he thought, suiRcient to satisfy every candid mind, he was willing still to restate and re-explain, and, if possible, satisfy the most per- ■zjerse." The member for Devon at last declared that he had spoken only from his affection for the prince ; that "he had not said, he was dissatisfied," and that he now left the whole matter to the judgment of the house. Pitt covered his friend's retreat, by a defence of the privileges of speech in the legis- lature. But such contests were too hazardous to be wisely provoked again. Misfortune, which in private life has a singular faculty of stripping the sufferer of his friends, in public life often gathers the national sym- pathy round him. The man who would have been left to perish in his cell, brought to the scaffold, is followed by the outciy of the multitude. The gene- ral voice began to rise against the severity of go- 1787.] THE PRINCE'S EMBARRASSMENTS. 53 vernment. ; and in a few days after the debate,* the prince was informed by the minister, that if the mo- tion intended for the next day were withdrawn, every thing should be settled to his satisfaction. Accor- dingly, Alderman Newnham commimicated to the house, in which four hundred members were present, the intelligence that his motion was now rendered unnecessary ; and all was mutual congratulation. The ministerial promise was kept ; but kept with a full reserve of the royal displeasure. A stem re- buke was couched in a message to parliament. " G. R. It is with the greatest concern his majesty acquaints the house of commons, that from the ac- counts which have been laid before his majesty by the Prince of Wales, it appears that the prince has incurred a debt to a large amount, which, if left to be discharged out of his annual income, would render it impossible for him to support an establishment suited to his rank and station. " Painful as it is at all times to his majesty to pro- pose an addition to the many expenses necessarily borne by his people, his majesty is induced, from his paternal affection to the Prince of Wales, to recur to the liberality and attachment of his faithful commons for their assistance on an occasion so interesting to his majesty's feelings, and to the ease and honour of so distinguished a branch of his royal family. " His majesty could not, however, expect or desire the assistance of this house, but on a well-grounded expectation that the prince will avoid contracting any debts in future, . " With a view to this object, and from an anxious desire to remove any possible doubt of the sufficiency of the prince's income to support amply the dignity of his situation, his majesty has directed the sum of 10,000Z. per annum to be paid out of the civil list, in addition to the allowance which his majesty has * May 3. E2 54 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1787. hitherto given him ; and his majesty has the satis- faction to inform the house, that the Prince of Wales has given his majesty the fullest assurances of his determination to confine his future expenses within the income, and has also settled a plan for arranging those expenses in the several departments, and for fixing an order for payment, under such regulations as his majesty trusts will effectually secure the due execution of the prince's intentions. " His majesty will direct an estimate to be laid before this house of the sum wanting to complete^ in a proper manner, the work which has been under- taken at Carlton House, as soon as the same can be prepared with sufficient accuracy, and recommends it to his faithful commons to consider of making some provision for this purpose/' This account was shortly after laid on the table. Debts. Bonds and debts 13,000Z. Purchase of houses 4,000 Expenses of Carlton House 53,000 Tradesmen's bills 90,804 160,804?. Expenditure from July, 1783, to July, 1786. Household, &c 29,276Z. Privy purse 16,050 Payments made by Col. Hotham, particulars delivered in to his majesty 37,203 Other extraordinaries 11,406 93,936i Salaries 64,734 Stables 37,919 Mr. Robinson's 7,059 193,648.'. On the day following the presentation of this pa- per, the commons carried up an address to the throne, humbly desiring that his majesty would order 161,000/. to be issued out of the civil list for the payment of the debt, and a sum of 20,000/. for the completion of Carlton House. 1787.] THE prince's friends. 55 This proceeding had the usual fate of half mea- sures, it palliated the evil only to make it return in double force. It showed the king's displeasure, without ensuring the prince's retrenchment. The public clamoured at the necessity for giving away so large a sum of the national money ; while the cre- ditors, whom the sum, large as it was, would but in- adequately pay, boldly pronounced themselves de- frauded. Whether the leaders of the legislature were rejoiced or discontented, remained in their own bosoms. But Pitt had accomplished the important purpose of suppressing for the time a topic which might have deeply involved his administration ; and Fox's sagacity must have seen in this imperfect measure the very foundation on which a popular leader would love to erect a grievance. It gave him the full use of the prince's injuries for all the pur- poses of opposition. Hopeless of future appeal, stung by public rebuke, and committed before the empire in hostility to the court and the minister, the prince was now thrown completely into his hands. CHAPTER VI. The Prince's Friends, There seems to be a law of politics, by which the heir of the crown is inevitably opposed to the crown. This grew into a proverb in Holland, when the stadt- holderate had become hereditary; and may have found its examples in all countries where the consti- tution retains a vestige of freedom. The line of the Georges has furnished them for three generations. Frederic, Prince of Wales, son of George the Se- cond, was in constant opposition to the court, wag the centre of a powerful party, and was even in- 56 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1787. volved in personal dispute with the king-. There is a curious similitude in his life to that of his late ma- jesty. — The origin of the alienation was, the old " root of all evil," money. The opposition headed by Pulteney (the Fox of his day) adopted the prince's cause, and moved in parliament for the in- crease of his income to 100,000/. The king resented equally the demand and the connexion ; and the dis- pute was carried on with the natural implacability of a family quarrel. — The prince collected the wits round him ; the king closeted himself with a few an- tiquated and formal nobles. — The prince's residence, at Cliefden, in Buckinghamshire, was enlivened by perpetual festivity, baUs, banquets, and plays ; among which was the mask of Alfred, by Thompson and Mallet, written in honour of the Hanover accession, with Quin in the part of Alfred. St. James's was a royal fortress, in which the king sat guarded from the approach of all public gayety. — Frederic, too, pushed the minister so closely, that he had no refuge but in a reconciliation between the illustrious belli- gerants ; and Walpoie, perplexed by perpetual de- bate, and feeling the ground giving way under him, proposed to the prince an addition of 50,000/. to his income, and 200,000/. for the discharge of his debts. But Walpole's hour was come ; opposition, con- scious of his weakness, determined to give him no respite. The prince haughtily refused any accom- modation while the obnoxious minister was suffered to remain in power. Walpoie was crushed. The prince led opposition into the royal presence ; and the spoils of office rewarded them for a struggle ■carried on in utter scorn alike of the king's feelings and the national interests, but distinguished by great talent, dexterity, and determination. Yet victory was fatal to them; they quarrelled for the spoils, and Walpoie had his revenge in the disgrace of Pul- teney for ever. On the death of Prince Frederic, the next heia 1787.] THE prince's friends. 57 Prince George, became the prize of opposition headed by Pitt (Lord Chatham), Lord Temple, and the Grenvilles. Leicester House, the residence of his mother, again eclipsed St. James's, and the Newcastle administration trembled at the popularity of this rival court. To withdraw his heir from party, the king offered him a residence in St. James's. But before the hostility could be matured into open resistance, a stroke of apoplexy put an end to the royal life, placed the prince on the throne, and turned the eloquence of opposition into sarcasms on Scotch influence, and burlesques on the princess- mother's presumed passion for the handsome minister. In other lands the king is a despot, and the heir- apparent a rebel ; in England the relation is softened, and the king is a tory, and the heir-apparent a whig. Without uncovering the grave, to bring up things for dispute which have lain till their shape and substance are half dissolved away in that great receptacle of the follies and arts of mankind, it is obvious that there was enough in the contrast of men and parties to have allured the young Prince of Wales to the side of opposition. Almost prohibited, by the rules of the English court from bearing any important part in the go- vernment ; almost condemned to silence in the legis- lature by the custom of the constitution ; almost re- stricted, by the etiquette of his birth, from exerting himself in any of those pursuits which cheer and elevate a manly mind, by the noble consciousness that it is of value to its country ; the life of the eldest born of the throne appears condemned to be a splendid sinecure. The valley of Rasselas, with its impassable boundary, and its luxurious and spirit- subduing bowers, was but an emblem of princely existence; and the moralist is unfit to decide on human nature, who, in estimating the career, forgets the temptation. 5S GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1787. It is neither for the purpose of undue praise to those who are now gone beyond human opinion, nor with the idle zeal of hazarding new conjectures, that the long exclusion of the Prince of Wales from public activity is pronounced to have been a signal injury to his fair fame. The same mental and bodily gifts which were lavished on the listless course of fashionable life, might have assisted the councils, or thrown new lustre on the arms, of his coun- try ; the royal tree, exposed to the free blasts of hea- ven, might have tossed away those parasite plants and weeds which encumbered its growth, and the nation might have been proud of its stateliness, and loved to shelter in its shade. The education of the royal family had been con- ducted with so regular and minute an attention, that the lapses of the prince's youth excited peculiar dis- pleasure in the king. The family discipline was almost that of a public school: their majesties gene- rally rose at six, breakfasted at eight with the two elder princes, and then summoned the younger chil- dren : the several teachers next appeared, and the time till dinner was spent in diligent application to languages and the severer kinds of literature, varied by lessons in music, drawing, and the other accom- plishments. The king was frequently present; the queen superintended the younger children, like an English mother. The two «lder princes laboured at Greek and Latin with their tutors, and were by no means spared in consequence of their rank. " How would your majesty wish to have the princes treated ?" was said to be Markham's inquiry of the king. " Like the sons of any private English gen- tleman," was the manly and sensible answer. " If they deserve it, let them be flogged ; do as you used to do at Westminster." The command was adhered to, and the royal cul- prits acquired their learning by the plebeian mode. 1787] THE prince's friends. 59 The story is told, that on the subsequent change oi preceptors, the command having been repeated, Arnald, or one of his assistants, thought proper to inflict a punishment, without taking into due con- sideration that the infants whom Markham had dis- cipUned with impunity were now stout boys. How- ever, the Prince and the Duke of York held a little council on the matter, and organized rebellion to the rod : on its next appearance they rushed upon the tutor, wrested his weapons from him, and exer- cised them with so much activity on his person, that the offence was never ventured again. Louis the Fourteenth, when, in his intercourse with the accomplished society of France, he felt his own deficiencies, often upbraided the foolish indulgence which had left his youth without instruction; ex- claiming, " Was there not birch enough in the forest of Fontainebleau ]" George the Third was deter- mined that no reproach of this nature should rest upon his memory ; and probably no private family in the empire were educated with more diligence in study, more attention to religious observances, and more rational respect for their duties to society, than the children of the throne. This course of education is so fully acknowledged that it has even been made a charge against the good sense of that excellent man and monarch ; as stimu- lating some of the dissipations of the prince's early life by the contrast between undue restraint and sud- den liberty. Yet the princes were under no restraint but from evil. They had their little sports and compa- nionships ; they were even, from time to time, initiated into such portions of court life as might be under- stood at their age ; children's balls were given ; the king, who was fond of music, had frequent concerts, at which the royal children were shown, dressed in the ribands and badges of their orders ; and in the numerous celebrations at Kew and Windsor, they en- joyed their full share. All their birthdays were kept 60 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1787. with great festivity ; and August, froni its being an auspicious period for the royal family, as the mo-nth of the Hanover accession, the battle of Minden, and the . birth of three of the princes, w^as almost a continual holy day : prizes were given to the water- men on the Thames, sports were held in Windsor and Kew, and the old English time of both rustic and royal merriment seemed to have come again. There can be no difficulty in relieving the memory of George the Third from the charge of undue re- straint ; for nothing can be idler than the theory, that to let loose the passions of the young is to in- culcate self-control. Vice is not to be conquered by inoculation ; and the parent who gives his sons a taste of evil, will soon find that what he gave as an antidote has been swallowed as a temptation. The palpable misfortune of the prince was, that on emerging from the palace, he had still to learn human character, the most essential public lesson for his rank. Even the virtues of his parents were in- jurious to that lesson. Through infancy and youth he had seen nothing round him that could give a con- ception of the infinite heartlessness and artifice, the specious vice, and the selfish professions, that must beset him at his first step into life. A public educa- tion might have, in some degree, opened his eyes to the realities of human nature. Even among boys, some bitter evidence of the hoUowness and hypo- crisy of life is administered ; and the princess under- standing might have been early awakened to the sa- lutary caution, which would have cast out before him, naked, if not ashamed, the tribe of flatterers and pretended friends who so long.perverted his natu- ral popularity. But there was much in the timrs to perplex a man of his high station and hazardous opportunities, let his self-control be however vigilant. The habits of society have since been so much changed, that it is difficult to conceive the circumstances of that si]> 1787.] THE prince's friends. 61 gular and stirrmg- period. We live in a day of me- diocrity in all things. The habits of fifty years ago were, beyond all comparison, those of a more pro- minent, sho^vy, and popular system. The English nobleman sustained the honours of his rank with a larger display ; the Englishman of fashionable life was more conspicuous in his establishment, in his appearance, and even in his eccentricities: the phae- ton, his favourite equipage, was not more unlike the cabriolet, that miserable and creeping contrivance of our day, than his rich dress and cultivated maimers were like the wretched costume and low fooleries that make the vapid lounger of modern society. The women of rank, if not wiser or better than their successors, at least aimed at nobler objects: they threw open their mansions to the intelligent and ac- complished minds of their time, and instead oi fete- ing every foreign coxcomb, who came with no better title to respect than his grimace and his guitar, sur- rounded themselves with the wits, orators, and scho- lars of England. The contrivance of watering-places had not been then adopted as an escape, less from the heats of summer than from the observances of summer hos- pitality. The great families returned to their coun- try-seats with the close of parliament, and their re- turn was a holyday to the country. They received their neighbours with opulent entertainment ; cheered and raised the character of the humbler ranks by their liberality and their example ; extinguished the little oppressions, and low propensities to crime which ha- bitually grow up where the lord is an absentee ; and by their mere presence, and in the simple exercise of the natural duties of rank and wealth, were the great benefactors of society. A noble family of that time would no more have thought of flying from its country neighbours to creep into miserable lodgings at a watering-place, and hide its diminished head among the meager accommodations and miscella^ F 62 GEORGE THE FOURTH* [1787. neous society of a seacoast village, than it would of liurning' its title-deeds. The expenses of the French war may have done something of this ; and the reduced rent-roils of the nobility may countenance a more limited expenditure. But whether the change have been in matter or mind, in the purse or the spirit, the change is undeniable ; and where it is not com- pelled by circumstances is contemptible. The prince was launched into public life in the midst of this high-toned time. With an income of 50,000Z. a-year, he was to take the lead of the Eng* lish nobility, many of them with twice his income^ and, of course, free from the court-encumbrances of an official household. All princes are made to be plundered; and the youth, generosity, and compa* nionship of the prince marked him out for especial plunder. He was at once fastened on by every glit* tering profligate who had a debt of honour to dis* charge, by every foreign marquis who had a hijou to dispose of at ten times its value, by every member of the turf who had an unknown Eclipse or Childers in his stables, and by every nameless claimant on his personal patronage or his unguarded finance, until he fell into the hands of the Jews, who offered him mo* ney at fifty per cent.; and from them into the hands of political Jews, who offered him the national trea- sury at a price to which a hundred per cent, was mo- deration. At this time the prince was nineteen, as ripe an age as could be desired for ruin ; and in three short years the consummation was arrived at, — ^he was ruined. The Prince of Wales had now reached the second period of his public life. He had felt the bitterness of contracted circumstances, and the still keener trial of parliamentary appeal. His personal feelings had been but slightly spared in either; and we can, scarcely be surprised at his shrinking from the cabi- net, in which he had found none but baffled castiga- 1787.] THE prince's friends. 63 tors, and attaching himself more closely to that op- position in which he had found none but active and successful friends. It is certain, that few men of his rank had ever been more wrung by the severity of the public in- quisition mto the habits of their lives. Court scan- dals are, at all times, precious ; but the power of probing the wounds of princely life was never in- dulged in more generously for the sake of popular science. The newspapers, too, plunged fiercely into the merits on both sides, and " By decision more embroiled the fray." Those formidable, but salutary scourges of public error, were just beginning to assume their influence ; and, like all possessors of unexpected power, their first use of it was to lay on the lash without mercy. Crabbe, then young, tremulously describes the terrors that must have naturally startled the chaplain of a duke at the rise of this grand flagellator ; though, like all satirists, he overlooks the actual and measureless good in the picturesque evil. " But Sunday past, what numbers flourish then, What wondrous labours of the press and pen I Diurnal most, some thrice each week affords, Some only once ; O, avarice of words ! When thousand starving minds such manna seek, To drop the precious food but once a week ! Endless it were to sing the powers of all, Their names, their numbers, how they rise and fall, Like baneful herbs, the gazer's eye they seize, Rush to the head, and poison where they please; Like summer flies, a busy, buzzing train. They drop their maggots in the idler's brain ; The genial soil preserves the fruitful store. And there they grow, and breed a thousand more. * * # * * Nor here th' infectious rage for party stops. But flits along from palaces to shops ; Pur weekly journals o'er the land abound And spread their plague and influenza round. 64 GEORGE THE FOURTH. {1787 The village, too, the peaceful pleasant plain, Breeds the whig farmer, and the tory swain ; Brooks' and St. Alban's boast not, but instead Stares the red Ram, and swings the Rodney's Head. Here clowns delight the weekly news to con, And mingle comments as they blunder on ; To swallow all their varying authors teach, To spell a title, and confound a speech. One with a muddled spirit quits the News, And claims his native license, — to abuse ; Then joins the cry, that ' all the courtly race Strive but for power, and parley but for place';' Yet hopes, good man, that all may still be well. And thanks his stars— he has a vote to sell."* If the prince had been a man of a harsh and gloomy mind, he had already found matter to qualify him for a Timon. But his experience produced no bit^ terness against human nature, though it may have urged him into more intimate connexion with the party that promised at once to protect and to avenge. Long attracted to Fox by the social captivations of that singularly-gifted individual, he now completely joinedhimasthe politician, made friends of his friends and enemies of his enemies, unfurled the opposition banner, and all but declared himself the head of the great aristocratic combination, which was now more than ever resolved to shake the minister upon his throne. In 1792t the prince had been introduced to the house of peers, attended by the Dukes of Cumber- land, Richmond, Portland, and Lord Lewisham, and had spoken on the Marquis of Abercorn's motion for an address on the proclamation for repressing sedi- tious meetings. The speech was much admired for the grace of its delivery. It was in substance that — " He was educated in the principle, and he should ever preserve it, of a reverence for the constitutional liberties of the people ; and as on those liberties the happiness of the people depended, he was determined, * Poem of *' The Newspaper," published in 1784. t November U. „^^ . 1787.] THE prince's friends. 65" as far as his interest could have any force, to sup- port them. The matter at issue was, whether the constitution was or was not to be maintained; whether the wild ideas of theory were to conquer the wholesome maxims of established practice; and whether those laws, under which we had flourished for so long a series of years, were to be subverted by a reform unsanctioned by the people. " As a person nearly and dearly interested in the welfare, and he would emphatically add, the happi- ness and comfort of the people, it would be treason to the principles of his mind, if he did not come for- ward and declare his disapprobation of those sedi- tious publications which had occasioned the motion now before their lordships ; his interest was con- nected with the interests of the people ; they were so inseparable, that unless both parties concurred, happiness could not exist. " On this great, this solid basis, he grounded the vote Avhich he meant to give ; and that vote should unequivocally be, for a concurrence with the address of the commons." He concluded by saying, with remarkable effect, — " I exist by the love, the friend- ship, and the benevolence of the people, and them I never will forsake as long as I live." This speech, whether suggested by the Duke of Portland (as was rumoured), or conceived by the prince, was obviously ministerial. But in those days, when the lord of the treasury might in the next month be thundering at the head of its assailants, and in the month after be flinging back their baffled bolts from the secure height of ministerial power ; when in one month he might be the rebellious Titan, and in the next the legitimate Jove, the waving of whose curls shook the Olympus of Downing-street from its summit to its base ; the rapid changes of the administration made ministerial allegiance curiously fugitive. Before the worshipper had time to throw himself at the foot of the altar, the idol was gone, F3 66 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1787. and another was in possession ; before the cargo of fealty could reach the port, the port was in dust and ashes, or a hostile ensign waved upon its walls. North, Pitt, Shelbume, Fox, and Rockingham succes- sively mastered the treasury bench, within scarcely more months than their names; until government had begun to be looked on as only a more serious masquerade, where every man might assume every character in turn, and where the change of dress was the chief difference between the Grand Turk and his buffoon. The prince was the great political prize. From the hour of his infancy, when he was first shown be- hind his gilded lattice at St. James's to the people, he was the popular hope. The king's early illness, which made it probable that the heir might soon be the master of the crown, fixed the public interest still more anxiously upon him, and the successive cabinets felt the full importance of his name : but now the whole advantage was on the side of oppo- sition. England had never before seen such a phalanx armed against a minister. A crowd of men of the highest natural talents, of the most practised ability, and of the first public weight in birth, fortune, and popularity, were nightly arrayed against the ad- ministration, sustained by the solitary eloquence of the young Chancellor of the Exchequer. Yet Pitt was not careless of followers. He was more than once even charged with sedulously gather- ing round him a host of subaltern politicians, whom he might throw forward as skirmishers, — or sacri- fices, which they generally were. Powis, describing the " forces led by the right hon. gentleman on the treasury bench," said, " the first detachment may be called his body-guard, who shoot their little arrows against those who refuse allegiance to their chief."* ■niis light infantry we*re, of course, soon scattered * Wraxall's Memoirs. 1787.] THE fringe's friends. 0!T when the main battle joined. But Pitt, a son of the aristrv^racy, was an aristocrat in all his nature, and he loved to sc^ young men of family round him; others were cnosen for their activity, if not for their force, and some probably from personal liking. In the later period of his career, his train was swelled by a more influential and promising race of political worshippers, among whom were Lord Mornington, since Marquis Wellesley ; Ryder, since Lord Har- rowby; and Wilberforce, still undignified by title, but possessing an influence which, perhaps, he values more. The minister's chief agents in the house of commons were Mr. Grenville (since Lord Grenville) and Dundas. Yet, among those men of birth or business, what rival could be found to the popular leaders on the op- posite side of the house, — to Burke, Sheridan, Grev Windham, or to Fox, that "Prince and chief of many throned powers, Who led the embattled seraphim to war." Without adopting the bitter remark of the Duke de Montausier to Louis the Fourteenth, in speaking of Versailles : — " Vous avez beau faire, sire, vous n'en ferez jamais qu'un favori sans merite," it was impossi- ble to deny their inferiority on aU the great points of public impression. A debate in that day was one of the highest intellectual treats: there was always some new and vigorous feature in the display on both sides ; some striking effort of imagination or mas- terly reasoning, or o£ that fine sophistry, in which, as was said of the vices of the French noblesse, half the evil was atoned by the elegance. The ministe- rialists sarcastically pronounced that, in every debate, Burke said something which no one else ever said, Sheridan said something that no one else ought to say, and Fox something that no one else would dare to say. But the world, fairer in its decision, did justice to their extraordinary powers ; and found 68 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1787 in the Asiatic amplitude and splendour of Burke, — in Sheridan's alternate subtlety and strength, remind- ing it at one time of Attic dexterity, and another of the uncaleulating boldness of barbarism, — and in Fox's matchless English self-possession, unaffected vigour, and overflowing sensibility, — a perpetual source of admiration. But it was in the intercourses of social life that the superiority of opposition was most incontestable. Pitt's life was in the senate : his true place of exist- ence was on the benches of that ministry, which he conducted with such unparalleled ability and success : he was in the fullest sense of the phrase, a public man ; and his indulgences in the few hours which he could spare from the business of office, were more like the necessary restoratives of a frame already shattered, than the easy gratifications of a man of society: and on this principle we can safely account for the common charge of Pitt's propensity to wine. He found it essential, to relieve a mind and body exhausted by the perpetual pressure of affairs : wine was his medicine : and it was drunk in total solitude, or with a few friends from whom the minister had no concealment. Over his wine the speeches for the night were often concerted ; and when the dinner was done, the table council broke up only to finish the night in the house. The secret history of those symposia might still clear up some of the problems that once exceedingly perplexed our politicians. On one occasion Pitt's silence on a motion brought forward by the present Earl Grey with great expectation and great effect, excited no less surprise, than its being replied to by Dundas, whose warfare generally lay among less hazardous antagonists. The clubs next day were in a fever of conjecture on this apparent surrender of a supremacy, of which the minister was supposed to be peculiarly jealous. . The mystification lasted until Dundas laughingly 1787.] THE prince's friends. 69 acknowledged that, on the nig-ht before the debate, Pitt and some of their immediate friends had been amusing themselves after dinner with imaginary speeches for opposition : he himself had made a bur- lesque speech for the motion, and Pitt enjoyed the idea so highly, that he insisted on his replying to the mover in the house, saying, "that by the law of Par- liament nobody could be so fit to make a speech against, as he who had made a speech Jbr; and that his only chance of escaping the charge of being a proselyte, was by being an assailant." When the debate came on, Dundas had waited for the minis- ter's rising, as usual ; but, to his surprise, he found that Pitt was determined to keep up the jest, and compel him, malgri, bongr^j to speak. There was no resource, Pitt was immoveable, and the festive orator, to his considerable embarrassment, was forced to lead. But wine, if a pleasant associate, is a dangerous master : and an after-dinner frolic is mentioned as having nearly cost the minister his life. Returning, past midnight, with his friends to Wimbledon, from Mr. Jenkinson's, at Croydon, they found one of the turnpike gates open; and, whether from the na- tural pleasure of baffling the turnpikeman, or of cheating the king, the party put spurs to their horses and galloped through. Those sportive personages were no less than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Lord Chancellor, and the Treasurer of the Navy —Pitt, Thurlow, and Dundas. The gate-keeper called after them in vain, until deciding, from their haste, and there having been rumours of robberies on the road, that they were three highwaymen, he summarily took the law into his own hands, and discharged a blunderbuss at their backs. However, their speed, or his being unaccustomed to shoot mi- nisters flying saved them ; and they had to suffer from nothing but those " paper bullets of the brain" which Beneihck so much despised. Of those they 70 GEORGE THE FOtJRTH. [1787 had many a volley. The Rolliad thus commemo- rated the adventure : ' *' Ah think what danger on debauch attends ! Let Pitt, o'er wine, preach temperance to his friends, How, as he wandered darkling o'er the plain. His reason drowned in Jenkinson's champaign, ; A rustic's hand, but righteous fate withstood, i Had shed a premier's for a robber's blood." But those were rare condescensions to society m the premier. From remaining unmarried, he was without an establishment ; for the attempt which he made to form one, with his fantastic relative Lady Hester Stanhope at its head, soon wearied him, and he escaped from it to the easier hospitality of Mr. Dundas, whose wife, Lady Jane, was a woman of remarkable intelhgence, and much valued by Pitt. His official dinners were generally left to the ma- nagement of Steele, one of the secretaries of the trea- sury. I But with Fox all was the bright side of the picture. His extraordinary powers defied dissipation. No public man of England ever mingled so much per- sonal pursuit of every thing in the form of indul- gence with so much parliamentary activity. From the dinner he went to the debate, from the debate to the gaming-table, and returned to his bed by day- light, freighted with parliamentary applause, plun- dered of his last disposable guinea, and fevered with sleeplessness and agitation; to go through the same round within the next twenty-four hours. He kept no house ; but he had the houses of all his party at his disposal, and that party were the most opulent and sumptuous of the nobility. Cato and Antony were not more unlike, than the public severity of Pitt, and the native and splendid dissoluteness of Fox. i They were unlike in all things. Even in such slight peculiarities as their manner of walking into the house of commons, the contrast was visible. 1787.] THE PRINCE S FRIENDS* 71 From the door Pitt's countenance was that of a man who felt that he was coming into his high place of business. " He advanced up the floor with a quick firm step, with the head erect and thrown back, look- ing to neither the right nor the left, nor favouring with a glance or a nod any of the individuals seated on either side, among whom many of the highest would have been gratified by such a mark of recog- nition."* Fox's entrance was lounging or stately, as it might happen, but always good-humoured ; he had some pleasantry to exchange with everybody, and until the moment when he rose to speak, con- tinued gayly talking with his friends. As the royal residences were all occupied by the king, or the younger members of the royal family, the prince was forced to find a country-seat for him- self; and he selected Brighton, then scarcely more than a little fishing village, and giving no conception of the seashore London that it has since become. Our national rage for covering every spot of the land with brick, and blotting out the sky with the smoke of cities linked to cities, had not then become epi- demic ; and Brighton, in all its habits, was as far re- moved from London as Inverness : but its distance, not above a morning's drive for the rapid charioteer- ing of his royal highness, made it eligible ; and at Brighton he purchased a few acres, and began to build. Probably no man has ever begun to build, without having the prince's tale to tell. Walpole advises a man never to lay the first stone, until he has settled his children, buried his wife, and hoarded three times the amount of the estimate. There is no royal road to building ; and the prince soon found that he must undergo the common lot of all who tempt their fate with architecture. ♦ Wraxall. 72 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1787. His first work was a cottage in a field. The cottage was a singularly pretty and picturesque little fabric, in a small piece of ground where a few shrubs and roses shut out the road, and the eye looked unobstructed over the ocean. But visiters naturally came, and the cottage was found small. The prince's household and visiters gradually in- creased, and there was then no resource but in a few additional apartments. It was at last found that those repeated improvements were deformities, and that their expense would be better employed in making a complete change. From this change grew the present Pavilion ; the perpetual ridicule of tourist wit, and certainly un- suited in style to its present encumbered and narrow site, and perhaps to European taste. But if no man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre, no man is a prince to his architect. Whatever be his repugnance, he is bound hand and foot by the dictator of taste ; is ac- countable for nothing, but the rashness of surrendering himself at discretion ; and has henceforth nothing to do but to bear the public pleasantry as patiently as he may, and consider how he shall pay his biU. Yet the happiest hours of the prince's life were spent in this cottage. But it is not for men of his condition to expect the quiet of an humbler and more fortunate situation, the happy, honeyed lapse of years occupied only in cultivating the favourite tastes or the gentle affections of the human heart. He was too important to the public, in all senses of the word, to be suffered to enjoy the ^^jucunda oblivia" which every man of common knowledge of life feels to be among its best privileges. He was too essential to the objects of the great competitors for power ; to the multitude, who look upon the purse of princes as their own ; and even to the general eagerness of the populace for royal anecdote, to be left unmolested in any retreat, however remote or secluded. His best quiet was only that of the centre of a vortex ; 1787.] THE prince's frienbs. 73 and he was scaicely suffered to make the experiment of ease, when the question of the Regency led, or rather flung, him into that sea of troubled and con- flicting interests from which he was destined never to emerge. His royal highness had joined the Foxites almost at the commencement of his public life. The capti- vation of Fox's manners, the freedom from restraint which he found in the society of which Fox was the idol, and the actual elegance and high life of the whig circle, were probably the chief sources of his choice. For what could be the politics of a handsome boy of nineteen, living in a perpetual round of enter- tainments, with nothing to take care of but his beauty, and with all the world saying civil things to him, and he saying civil things to all the world ? But, once fairly in the harness of party, the only difficulty was to keep him from overturning the machine by his eagerness. In the debates on the celebrated India bill, which Fox called the pyramid of the British power, but which he might more justly have called the mauso- leum of his own ; the Prince of Wales made himself conspicuous to a degree, which brought down strong charges of influence on his friends ; and certainly embarrassed North and Fox, already almost over- borne by national displeasure. It was remarked on the prince's frequent presence in the house of com- mons during this perilous discussion, that " if the great personage in question, not content with merely listening to the debates, should, on any occasion, testify by his behaviour or gesticulation, while in the house, a predilection or partiality for any set of men ; such marks of his preference would be unbecoming, and might operate as a means of influence." Lord North delicately defended the practice, by a panegyric on the prince's " eminent abilities," and by expressing his personal gratification in seeing " a prince to whom the country must look up as its hope, thus practically G 74 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1787, becoming acquainted with the nature of this limited government, rather than taking up the hearsay of the hour, or looking for his knowledge to flatterers." Fox, with his usual boldness, dashed out at once into lofty invective on the charges, " pernicious and ridiculous alike, adopted by no less the enemies of free discussion in that house, than the calumniators of the motives of a distinguished personage, whose whole spirit was honour." — " Was the mind which might, at any hour, by the common chances of mor- tality, be summoned to the highest duties allotted to man, to be left to learn them by accident 1 Was he to be sent to discover the living spirit of the consti- tution in the dust of libraries, or in the unintelligible compilations of black-letter law ; or to receive it from the authority of the politicians, pious or other- wise, who had doled out doctrines to the house, which the house and the country, he believed, had heard with equal astonishment, however popular they might ,^ be in the inquisition, or perhaps in the conventicle ? For his part, he rejoiced to see that distinguished per- sonage disdaining to use the privileges of his rank, and keep aloof from the debates of that house. He rejoiced to see him manfully coming among them, to imbibe a knowledge of the constitution, within the walls of the commons of England. He, for his part, saw nothing in the circumstances which had called down so much volunteer eloquence and unnecessary reprobation, but a ground for praise ; an evidence of the British mind of that high personage, and a prac- tical pledge to the free institutions of the country." The member alluded to as the conventicle orator was Sir Richard Hill, brother of the preacher, who had the foolish and indecorous habit of introducing Scripture phraseology into his speeches, — a habit by which, without increasing any man's respect for the Scriptures, he naturally brought himself into constant ridicule. Sir Richard was often thus more trouble- some to his fricads than to his enemies. One eve- 1787.] THE PRINCE'S FRIENDS. 71^ ningjin contrasting Pitt's influence at St. James's with Fox's full-blown power in the house, he burst upon thhal. He escaped, by -little short of miracle ; but afterward declared, that " he had never been in such an explo- sion in his life ! it was a whirlwind of bullets and sulphur ; a furnace, — a volcano." Ney, perhaps, wished to have died at Waterloo. But he was reserved for a more unhappy fate ; by which he ouglit not to have died, and which remains among the darkest accusations of France and history against the exiled royal family. The battle of Waterloo was long considered by -the French as the laost formidable of all calamities, 332 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [182T. while it was obviously the most singular instance of good fortune ; it had put an end to the war in a week, and thus saved France from the invasion of a million one hundred and ten thousand ! of the allied troops who were waiting but the signal to march, and who were to be followed by as many more. A war on this scale must have trampled the country into a mire of blood. But the defeat rendered still higher ser- vices. If Napoleon had remained the conqueror, he would have remained the tyrant. His overthrow was the birth of the French constitution. Yet the people, stung with the immediate sense of failure, could not be reconciled to the name of Waterloo. The feeling exhibited itself on all occa- sions. — During the occupation of France by the al- lies, one evening, in the chateau of a seigneur, where some British officers were quartered, the conversation turned upon the war. The politeness of the seigneur to his guests was uniformly such, that all topics were discussed in the most amicable manner. " I ac- knowledge," said the Frenchman, " that Napoleon played the fool in his determined hostility to Eng- land ; that his commercial decrees were cruel and useless ; and that his threats of invasion could never have produced any thing but his own ruin, while you had your fleet." " No," said one of the officers, " nor if he had our fleet ; recollect the population, the army." " True," was the reply; "yet if Napoleon could have found a bridge to Dover, rely upon it, he would have found a road to London." " Your French troops march too slow," said the officer. " Mon Dieu ! they are the quickest marchers in the world," exclaimed the astonished Frenchman. " Pardon me, my dear sir," said the officer, com- posedly ; " London is a great way off". Now, it is not quite five leagues from Mont St. Jean to Brussels ; y^t I saw the French armv set out, to march from 1821.] NAPOLEON. 33a Mont St. Jean to Brussels, six months ago, and it has not yet got further than Waterloo." The error of sending Napoleon to Elba was not repeated. St. Helena was chosen, as the spot in which he could enjoy the largest portion of personal liberty without hazarding an escape, which might inflame France again : and in that island he continued until he died. Much as this fate of such a man must be regretted, it was indispensable to the peace of Europe. Napoleon at large would have been a firebrand ; and the lives of thousands or of milhons might have paid the forfeit of a second display of clemency. In St. Helena he lingered out six dreary years in indolent restlessness and impatient resigna tion ; talking loftily of his scorn for all things human, and quarrelling with Sir Hudson Lowe upon every subject under heaven; sometimes writing memoirs, which he generally burned ; sometimes rearing cab- bages, and shooting the buffaloes that intruded on his crop ; sometimes taking obvious pleasure in the homage naturally paid to him by the visiters to the island ; and, at others, shutting himself up in impe- rial solitude, and declaring that he would not be "made a wild beast of," to please the "barbarian English :" at intervals reviving the recollections of his high estate, and speaking with all his former in- tenseness and brilliancy; then silent for days to- gether; constant in nothing but his hatred of Sir Hudson Lowe, his wrath against Marmont, and his contempt for every being that bore the name of Bourbon. Those caprices were the natural results of a change so total ; from the most active and engrossing career of man, to the most shapeless and monotonous inac- tion. In the beginning of 1821, the last year of his life, he complained of some inward distemper ; for which his physicians found every name, and admi- nistered every remedy, but the right one. He tried to direct them to it, by saying that his father had died 334 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1821 of an ulcerated stomach, and that the complaint had probably descended to himself. But the physicians persevered, with the vigour of science, until their patient refused to take their medicines any longer. From the 17th of March his illness confined him to his room. He had an old contempt for medicine. " Our body is a watch," said he, " intended to go for a given time. The doctor is a watchmaker who can- not open the watch ; he must therefore work by ac- cident ; and for once that he mends it with his crooked instruments, he injures it ten times, until he destroys it altogether." In April, his Italian physician, An- tommarchi, called in Dr. Arnot, an Englishman. Still his patient said, with the Turk, " What is writ- ten is written ; man's hours are marked. None can live beyond their time." In this absurd idea, which might have proceeded from the growing feebleness of his mind in the pro- gress of his disease, he continued to refuse the alle- viation which the skill of his English attendant might have afforded, for cure was impossible. He now drew up his will, and directed that his body should be opened, and its state described to his son. " Of all my organs," said he, " the stomach is the most dis- eased. I believe that the disease is scirrhus of the pylorus. The physicians at Montpellier predicted that it would be hereditary in our family." Tumult- uous and fierce as his life had been, he died with some sentiments of religion. He had sent for two Italian priests some time before, and he calmly de- sired that the usual ceremonies of the Romish church should be complied with. In his last hours, he made this summary confession of his faith. " I am neither physicien nor philosophe* I believe in God, and am of the religion of my father. I was born a Catholic, and will fulfil all the duties of that church, and re- ceive the assistance which she administers." * Infidel. 1821.] NAPOLEON. 335 His hours were now numbered. His complaint was cancer of the stomach. From the 3d of May, he seemed to be in a continued heavy sleep. The fifth was a day of unexampled tempest in the island ; trees were every where torn up by the rocrts, the sea lashed and rent the shores, the clouds poured down torrents, the wind burst through the hills with the loudness of thunder. In this roar of the elements, Napoleon perhaps heard the old echoes of battle ; the last words on his lips were of war ; " tete d'ar- •iin^e''' v/as uttered in his dream, — and he died. The fiery spirit passed away, like Cromwell's, in storm ! The coup cfc&il of his rise and fall exhibits the most various, vivid, and dazzling career ever known ; the mightiest events and most singular vicissitudes ever crowded into the history of one man. CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 1769 — August 15. Born at Ajaccio, in Corsica. 1779 — Placed at the military school of Brienne. 1793 — An officer of artillery at the siege of Toulon, and appbinted gene- ral of brigade. 1794— Commands the conventional troops, and defeats the Parisians. 1796 — Appointed to the command of the army of Italy — Battle of Lodi . — Battle of Castiglione — Battle of Areola. 1797 — Surrender of Mantua and Trieste. Afril 18. Preliminaries with Arstria signed at Leoben — French take possession of Venice — Treaty of Campo Formio, with Austria, 1798 — Sails for Egypt — Battle of Embade, or the Pyramids. 1799 — May. Siege of Acre — Sails to France. Oct. 7. Lands at Fre- jus. Nov. 9. Dissolves the conventional government. Nov. 10. De- clared first consul. '^^-^r^.,. 1800 — Peace made with the Chouans — Crosses Mont St. Bernard. June 16. Battle of Marengo — Preliminaries with Austria signed at Paris Dec. 24. Explosion of the infernal machine. 1801— Treaty of Luneville with Austria— Preliminaries signed with England. 1802 — The Cisalpine Republic placed under his jurisdiction. March 27. Definitive treaty with England — Legion of Honour instituted. Av^ gust 2. Declared consul for life — Swiss form of government changed by him. \&)Z~-May 18. English declaration of war. June 5. Hanover con- quered. 1804— Feft. Moreau arrested. March 20. Death of the Due d'Enghien — Pichegru dies in prison. May 18. He is declared Emperor. Nov. 19. Crowned by the Pope. 1805— Writes a pacific letter to the King of England. April 11. Tmaty of Petersburg, between Engiaad, Russia, Austria, and Sweden— -Ue is 836 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1821. declared King of Italy — Mack's army surrenders at Ulm — French enter Vienna— Battle of Austerlitz — Treaty of Vienna with Prussia"~and of Presburg with Austria. 1806 — March 30. Joseph Buonaparte declared King of Naples. June 5. Louis Buonaparte declared King of Holland — Confederation of the Rhine — Marches against Prussia — Battle of Auerstadt or Jena — Enters Berlin. Nov. 19. Hamburgh taken. 1807— Battle of Eylau— of Friedland— Treaty of Tilsit. 1808 — July 7. Joseph Buonaparte declared King of Spain— 20. Surren- der of Dupont's army at Baylen — 29. Joseph evacuates Madrid. Aug. 21 . Battle of Vimiera. Nov. 5. Buonaparte arrive'' ai Vittoria. Dec. 4. Surrender of Madrid. 1809 — January BAttle of Corunna — Returns to Paris. April. War declared by Austria — Heads his army against Austria. May 10. French enter Vienna — Battle of Asperne. July 5. Battle of Wagram — Flushing taken by the English — Treaty of Vienna with Austria. Dec. Lucien Buonaparte arrives in England — Marriage with Josephine dissolved — Walcheren evacuated by the English. 1810 — March. Marries Maria Louisa, daughter of Francis 11. July. Holland and the Hanse Towns annexed to ihe French empire. August Bernadotte elected Crown-Prin':e of Sweden. 1811 — January I. Hamburgh annexed to the empire. April 20. The empress delivered of a son, who is styled Khig of Rome. 1812 — January. Swedish Pomerania seized by France. May. Heads the army against Russia. Jmtic 11. Arrives at Konigsberg. 28. Enters Wilna. Aug. 18. Smolensko taken. Sept. 7. Battle of the Moskwa, or Borodino. 14. French enter Moscow. Oct. 22. Evacuate it. Nov. 9. Arrives at Smolensko. Lee. 5. Quits the army. 18. Arrives at Paris. 1813 — April. Takes the command of the army on the Elbe. May I. Banle of Lutzen. 20. Of Bautzen. June 4:. Armistice agreed on. 21. Battle of Vittoria. Aug. 17. Hostilities recommence. 28. Battle of Dresden. Sept 7. English enter France. 28. French evacuate Dresden. Oct. 18. Battle of Leijisic. Nov. 15. Revolution in Holland. Dec. 8. English army crosses the Nieve. 1814 — Jan. 1. Allies cross the Rhine. March 30. Battle of Mont- martre. 31. Allies enter Paris. April 11. Napoleon abdicates the throne. May 8. Arrives at Elba. 1815 — March I. Relands in France at Cannes. 20. Resumes the throne. June 1. Holds the Champ-de-Mai. 11. Leaves Paris for Bel- gium. 15. Attacks the Prussians on the Sambre. 16. Attacks Blucher at Ligny — and Wellington at Quatre Bras. 18. Defeated at Waterloo. 22. Resigns the throne, finishing the hundred days. 29. Leaves Mal- maison. July 15. Received on board the Bellerophon. 24. At Torbay. Aug. 8. Sails in the Northumberland for St. Helena. Oct. 1& Lands at St. "Helena. l%2l— March 17. Confined by illness. May 5. Dies 1821.] THE REIGN* 337 CHAPTER XIX. The Reign. In his earlier years the king had never passed the limits of England. Etiquette and financial reasons were the cause. But he suffered little by the restric- tion. He spoke with sufficient ease all the foreign languages required at court ; and if he lost some in- dulgence of rational curiosity, and some knowledge of the actual aspect of the continent; he gained much more than an equivalent, in escaping those fo- reign follies which are so irreconcilably repulsive to the tastes of England. The hussar passion was not strong upon him; and though commanding a cavalry regiment, and fond of the allowable decora- tion of the soldier, it was to more travelled propen- sities that we owed the frippery which, for so many years, turned some of the finest portions of the British service into a paltry imitation of the worst of the foreign; disguised brave men in the trap- pings of mountebanks, and made a British parade the rival of a rehearsal at Astley's — a triumph of tailors. He never appeared before his people disfi- gured with the German barbarism of a pipe in the mouth, nor with the human face divine metamor- phosed into the bear's or the baboon's. He was an English gentleman ; and, conscious that the character placed him above the grossness of foreign indul- gences, or the theatric fopperies of foreign costumes, he adhered to the manners of his country. But, immediately on his accession to the throne, he visited Ireland,* Hanover,t and Scotland,! and in * August, 1821. t September, 1821 t August, 1822 Ff 338 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1821. hem all was received with the strongest marks of popular affection. While in Scotland, the intelli- gence of the Marquis of Londonderry's death reached him. The Marquis had died by his own hand ! The fatigues of public business, added to some domestic vexations, had disordered his brain, and, after a brief period of despondency, he put an end to his exist- ence. England regretted him as a high-minded statesman ; but Ireland had no sorrow for the peipe- trator of the Union, — a measure which, though fully merited by the popish propensities of the legislature, yet ojffended the just pride of the people, and was accomplished by a process of such lavish corruption, such open-faced and scandalous bargain and sale, as aggravated the insult, imbittered the national neces- sity of the transaction, and stamped the last shame on the brow of a fallen country. From the close of the French war, England had remained in peace for ten years, with the exception of a war of one day with the Algerines, in 1816. Those barbarians had massacred a crowd of unfor- tunate Italians trading and fishing at Bona, under the British flag. The insult could not be passed over : and a fleet of ten sail were instantly despatched to demand satisfaction for this act of savagery. The dey scoff'sd at the demand ; and the fleet, under Lord FiXmouth, seconded by a Dutch squadron, under Admiral Vo% der Capellen, tore his massive fortifi- cations to pieces in a six hours' fire. The dey was forced to make the humblest apology, to beg pardon of the British consul, and, by a more gratifying re- sult of victory, to deliver up all his Christian captives, and pledge himself to abolish piracy in his dominions. The latter condition, with the usual faith of barba- ians, he violated as soon as the British fleet were under sail. But Lord Exmouth had the high honour of sending to Italy, where they marched in solemn thanksgiving procession to their churches, five hundred human beings, who, but for his success. 1821.] THE REIGN. 339 would probably have finished their miserable lives in chains. This was the boldest action ever fought with bat- teries alone, and the most bloody to both the victors and the vanquished. The Algerine batteries were con- tinually reinforced during the day, and their loss was computed at four thousand men killed and wounded. A. comparison with the battles of the line, makes the. loss in the fleet the severest ever known, in proportion to the numbers engaged. In the action of the 1st of June, there were 26 sail of the line (including the Audacious) in action, with about 17,000 men; of those 281 were killed, and 797 wounded. Total 1078. In Lord Bridport's action 23d June, 1795, there were 14 sail, with about 10,000 men ; of whom only 31 were killed, and 113 wounded. Total 144. In the action off Cape St. Vincent, there were 15 sail of the line, with about 10,000 men; of whom were killed 73, and wounded 227. Total 300. In Lord Duncan's action, 11th Oct. 1797, there were 16 sail of the line (including two 50's) engaged, with about 8000 men ; of whom 191 were killed, and 560 wounded. Total 751. In the battle of the Nile, 1st Aug. 1798, there were 14 sail of the line engaged, with about 8000 men ; of whom 218 were killed, and 677 wounded. Total 895. In Lord Nelson's attack on Copenhagen, 2d April, 1801, there were 11 sail of the line and 5 frigates en- gaged, with about 7000 men ; of whom 234 were killed, and 641 wounded. Total 875. In the battle of Trafalgar, 21st 0(;t. 1805, there were 27 sail of the line engaged, with about 17,000 men ; of whom 412 were killed, and 1112 wounded. Total 1524. In the attack on Algiers there were 5 sail of the line and 5 frigates engaged, the crews of which may be computed at 5000 men ; of whom 128 were killed, and 690 wounded. Total 818.— If the Dutch 340 GEORGE THE FOTJRTH. [l82l frigates were added, they may be taken at 1500, of whom 13 were killed, and 32 wounded ; so that the totals would be, of 6500 men, 141 killed, and 722 wounded. Total 863. The dey paid the penalty of his defeat ; he was strangled in a few months after. A successor was easily found ; piracy flourished again, and Algiers luxuriated in its old system of strangling its go- vernors, and robbing on the high seas ; until the late French expedition extinguished the dynasty. Peace was complete ; but it threatened to involve Europe in distresses scarcely less severe than those of the most active hostilities. In the mean time, the chief territorial changes, on the basis of the treaty of Paris,* proceeded. The imperial conquests were lopped away from France, and she was reduced to her possessions in 1792. The celebrated Confedera- tion of the Rhine, which Napoleon had considered the master-stroke of his policy, and which made the whole of the minor German principalities but an out- work of France, was demolished by a touch of the pen, and a new league created in its room, from which French influence was totally excluded. Switzerland was left to its old governments; but Italy was given over to the sullen and unpopular yoke of Austria. Some of her West Indian islands were restored to France ; Java was given to the Putch ; but England retained the true prizes of the war, Malta, the Cape, and the Ionian Islands. In the same memorable year a close had been put to the American war ; a war of frigates,! idly begun, and willingly concluded on both sides. America took some of the British cruisers, ill manned, and ill provided ; balancing her success by a series of fool- ish expeditions into Canada, all which were beaten ; the war costing her enormous sums of money, with the imminent liazard of a separation between her northern * 30th March, 1814, t See Note Yl.—Pag-e 413. 1625.] THE REIGN. 341 and southern states, the total stoppage of her com- merce, and the loss of many thousand lives. Eng- land closed her exploits by an attack on New-Or- leans, which her expedition fortunately failed to take. The project itself excited strong criticism, — the coun- try was a swamp, the city was a regular place of pestilence, where even the natives perish in yearly swarms by the contagion; and what must be the mortality of the British soldier ? Had we not already sufficient swamps and fevers in the West Indies, to carry off the superfluity of our soldiership 1 The possession of this deplorable place would have been a perpetual source of irritation to America ; and would have cost the lives of a thousand men a-year until it involved us in a new quarrel, which might cost the lives of ten thousands.* The distresses of the peace became universal. From London to the Andes on one side, and from London to the wall of China on the other, the cessa- tion of that vivid and violent effort of folly, ambition, courage, and phrensy, all combined under the name of war, produced a languor scarcely less fatal than the sword. Bankruptcy spread, like a vast fog, over Eng- land, America, France, and Germany, at the same moment. But the vigour of England is incalculable. No country is so perpetually tampered with by theo- rists ; but no country can bear tampering so well : she outworks their follies. Her commerce reco- vered :, wealth rolled in upon her in a flood. Theory now plumed its broadest wings again: even the grimness of ministerial finance was lost in the ge- neral intoxication ; and Lord Goderich's speech, as chancellor of the exchequer,! — that famous speech, in which he professed himself unable to pour out his soul in language sufficiently glowing for the golden prospects before him; a proud example of the clear- lightedness of the prophetic budget ! gave the sanc- * See Note vn.—Page 414. tl825. Ff2 342 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1825. tion of one of the most solemn of orators and stub- born of financiers to the national dream. But his lordship had scarcely congratulated his countrymen on their too abundant prosperity, when the whole fell into dust before his eyes — the vision vanished, the rejoicing was dumb, the wealth was paper ; the princes of the modern Tyre were outcasts, fugitives, beggars. Seventy-five banks broke in as many days. Two hundred and fifty joint-stock companies, which but the week before would have contracted to throw a bridge across the Atlantic, make a railway round the globe, or dig a tunnel to the antipodes, were in the gazette without a solvent subscriber or an available shilling. The joint-stocks deserve a historian of their own. The loftiest exploits of speculation hid their dimi- nished heads before this colossal first-born of the nineteenth century of swindling. Law's scheme, tontines, lotteries, loans, mining companies, all the old contrivances for breathing the national veins, were sport to this; even the South Sea bubble was the tentative dexterity, the feeble knavery of our speculative childhood. The joint-stocks were the consummate building, the grand national temple to Mammon, the work of our matured skill in bewil- dering the moneyed mind, the last labour of the ge- nius of overreaching ; another Babel in its erection, its fall, and in the dispersion of its builders to every corner of the earth where a debtor might escape a creditor. Yet what can exhaust the elasticity of England ! In a year, this catastrophe, which would have left the continent loaded with irremoveable ruins, was all but forgotten. The ground was cleared. Com- merce, like the giant refreshed, was again stretching out its hundred hands to grasp the wealth of earth and ocean ; discovering new powers and provinces iinknown before ; forcing its way through Europe, -against adl ihe barriers of our allies, who lepaid us 1825.] THE REIGN. 343 for restoring their thrones, by excommunicating our trade ; through America, against tariffs, tribunals, and the angry recollections of the war ; through In- dia, in defiance of the severer hostility of our fellow- subjects, the Company; through the ends of the earth, against ignorance, jealousy, the savage war- fare, and remorseless superstitions of barbarism. Such are the miracles wrought by giving the unre- stricted use of his faculties to man, — the miracles of freedom ! And while England has this noble mono- poly in her own hands, she may laugh all others to scorn : she holds the key of the world's wealth, who- ever may stand at the gate of the treasure-chamber ; while she remains the freest of nations, she is sove- reign of the talisman by which she can create opu- lence and strength at a word ; turn the sands of the desert into gold ; and, with a more illustrious necro- mancy, invest things as empty as the dust and air, with the shape and substance of grandeur and impe- rial power. Public affairs were now on the eve of a remarkable change. Lord Liverpool's ministry had continued for twelve years since the peace, without peculiar suc- cess or failure ; its fortunes a copy of the man, and both stamped with quiet mediocrity. Hissystemwas, to glide on from year to year, and think that his bu- siness was amply done, if the twelve months passed without a rebellion, a war, or a national bankruptcy ; to shrink from every improvement, in his terror of change; and to tolerate every old abuse, through dread of giving the nation a habit of inquiry. This evil was less the result of his intention than of his nature. England owes no higher thanks to his memory, as a patron of her arts or a protector of her literature, than as her guide to power, or the purifier of her constitution. Old Cyril Jackson, when he launched him from Oxford to begin the world in parliament^ -ivrote to his father> "Your son will never be a 344 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1827. Statesman." And the old man's sagacity was not mistaken. His most intimate associate has been heard to declare, that Lord Liverpool never read a book through since they were together at the uni- versity. The proof was given in his criminal ne- glect of the encouragement that an English minister owes to Uterature, as the first honour and security of his country. 1827. — Early m this year Lord Liverpool was seized with a paralytic affection, which disabled him from public business.* The premiership had for twelve years been a bed of slumber. It now fell into the hands of one who made it a bed of feverish anxiety and bitter wakefulness — George Canning, the first debater, the most dexterous politician, and the hap- piest wit of the house ; the most perplexed, imhappy, and disappointed of ministers. His first step decided all the rest : for it was the first step down the precipice. He had called the whigs to his side. It must be acknowledged that, in this ominous alliance, his " poverty, but not his will," was the counsellor. His whole life had been amused with laying the lash on opposition ; no man had oftener plucked the lion's hide over their ears : no man had more regularly converted the so- lemn liftings up of their voice into tones that set the house on a roar. But his former colleagues had deserted him ; and he, unhappily for his fame and for his peace, retaliated by deserting his principles. In England this never has been done with impunity, and, until England is destined to pe- rish, never will be done. Canning's spirit sank under his difiiculties. His mind had not yet expunged away enough of its original honour, to attain that base indifference to public opinion which makes the tranquillity of the base. The taunts of men incalcu- * He lingered, with his faculties decaying, till December, 1828, when he died. 1827.] THE REIGN. 345 lably his inferiors in intellect, and who were soon to display how far they could sink below him in poli- tical degradation ; vexed his graceful faculties, ex- hausted his sparkling animation ; and, after a brief period, clouded by the increasing embarrassments of useless allies and insidious adversaries, by painful consciousness, and the discovery that he had toiled / for a shadow after all, tormented him out of the world. Thus perished, after a four months' premiership, a minister of whom the nation had once formed the highest hopes ; the friend of Sheridan, and with no slight share of his genius ; the pupil of Pitt, and the ablest defender and most chosen depositary of his principles ; a man of refined scholarship, the hap- piest dexterity of conversation, keen public sagacity, and the most vivid, diversified, and pungent oratory in the legislature. Some suspicions were thrown on Canning's reli- gion, from the circumstance, that in his last illness, he was not attended by a clergyman. But if this be not directly attributable to the rapidity of his disease, or the negligence of those round him, we cannot suffer ourselves to conceive that Christianity was either unknown or unfelt by him who could wiite the following epitaph, — one of the most pathetic and beautiful in the whole compass of the language. "TO THE MEMORY OF " George Charles Canning, eldest Son of the Right Hovourable Creorge Canning and Joan Scott Ms Wife ; bom ^pril 25, 1801 — died March 31, 1820. " Though short thy span, God's utiimpeach'd decrees, Which made that shortcn'd span one long disease, -Yet merciful in chastening, gave thee scope For mild redeeming virtues, — faith and hope, Meek resignation, pious charity ; And, since this world was. not the world for thee,", Far from thy path removed, with partial care. Strife, glory, gain, and pleasure's flowery snare ; Bade earth's temptations pass thee harmless by, And fix'd on Heaven thine unaverted eye | 346 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1829. " O ! mark'd from birth, and nurtnr'd, for the skies '^ In youth, with more than learning's wisdom wise ' As sainted martyrs, patient to endure ! Simple as unwean'd infancy, and pure I Pure from all stain (save that of human clay, Which Christ's atoning blood hath washed away)' ^ By mortal sufferings now no more oppress'd, Mount, sinless spirit, to thy destin'd rest ! While I — reversed our nature's kindlier doom — Pour forth a father's sorrows on thy tomb." CHAPTER XX. The Catholic Question, ********** ********* * The statutes against popery in England and Ireland were the restrictions, not of a religious faith, but of a political faction ; enacted, not against dis- sidents from the church of England, but against rebellious partisans of the house of Stuart. The question was one, not of the liturgy, but of the sword. The Stuarts lost the day. They were exiled ; and the soldiers whom they left behind, were disabled by the provisions of law from again stirring up rebellion, and again shedding the blood of freemen in the cause of tyrants and slaves. But the decline of the exiled dynasty no sooner made the relaxation of those penalties in any degree safe, than they were relaxed. The oath of alle- giance,* leases for 999 years,t the full purchase of landed property, the extinction of all disabilities relative to education, the unrestrained public exer- cise of iheir religious rites and tenets ;J elevated * 13th and 14th Geo. m., cap. 35. 1 17th and 18th Geo. III., cap. 49. J By the act of 1782. 1829.] THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 347 the sons of that soldiery, from the condition na- tural to a defeated army, to a rank of privilege never possessed by Protestants under a popish government. The question was then laid aside. It slept from 1782 to 1792, — ten years of peace and singular prosperity in Ireland. But in 1789 France began to disturb the world. The manufacturing districts in the north of Ireland, much connected with America by trade and indivi- dual intercourse, rapidly adopted the idea of emu- lating the American revolt, while England was in the first perplexities of an approaching war. The Presbyterian of the north scorned the Roman Catho- lic of the south ; and would have disdained the re- public which was to be buttressed by the popish altar. But all that could embarrass government must be tried. Some millions of peasantry in tumult would form an important diversion ; and the agents of a faction that owned neither a king nor a God, were sent out to tell the Roman Catholic that he was excluded from the favour of his king, and restricted in the exercise of his religion. The topic which was adopted by the Presbyterian republican to embarrass the English cabinet, was adopted, of course, by the whigs in the Irish parlia- ment to embarrass the Irish minister. From Ire- land it was transmitted for the use of opposition in England. The purpose in these pages is not to discuss the point of theology, but to give a glance at the progress of the question. After years of contest, it was brought into the cabinet by Canning. In his reluc- tant exile from office, he had taken it as the common burden of opposition, and he bore it back with him. It now formed the endless taunt of his late col- leagues. " Will you repeal the Test Act, and over- throw the estabhshment ? Will you bring in Ca- tholics to legislate for Protestants, and overthrow the Constitution ?" was the perpetual outcry of the 348 GEORGE THE FOrRTH. [1829 champion, Mr. Peel, across the house, echoed by the congenial virtue of Mr. Dawson, and their retainers, and chiefly by the Duke of Wellington, who " could not comprehend the possibility of placing Roman Catholics in a Protestant legislature with any kind of safety, and whose personal knowledge told him, that no king, however Catholic, could govern his Catholic subjects without the aid of the pope.' Canning left the question as Fox had left it. Lor Goderich's short-lived ministry ran in and out of the cabinet with too breathless haste to decide on any thing. It perished of a fracas between two treasury officials, and expired on the road to Windsor. In 1828 the Duke of Wellington became prime minister. The empire, weary of the futile genera- tion that had just dropped out of power, rejoiced at the accession of a man distinguished in the public service, bound to the national interests by the most munificent rewards, and pledged in the most solemn and voluntary manner to resist the demands of popery. But his first steps taught the nation the hazards of premature applause. The formation of his cabinet was assailed, in parliament, under every shape of ridicule. The merits of his colleagues were loudly declared to be all summed up in the words mediocrity and submission. The ministers were called clerks, and the cabinet — a " bureau adjoining the Horse Guards." It must be owned that the premier's antipathies did not fall chiefly on indivi- duals trained by the habits of their lives to unqvestion- ing obedience. To the astonishment of England, her civil offices were filled with soldiers ! the minis- ter's quarter-master-general governed the colonies; his aid-de-camp governed the civil department of the army; his subordinates in the field were the admi- nistrators of employments so important to constitu- tional security, that they had never befoi e gone out of civil hands. But if the principle of subimssioa 1829.] THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 349 be essential to public happiness, the cabinet, the quarter-master, the aid-de-camp, the whole array of this martial government, lived on the breath of the premier's nostrils ; and they have justified the saga- city of the theory by the most unmurmuring acquies- cence in the memory of man So great a power has not been in the hands of any English subject since Wolsey, but one — and that one was Cromwell! For purposes still undeveloped, it became the de- termination of this formidable depositary of public wisdom, to admit Roman Catholics into the legisla- ture. — Tiie first step was, to repeal the Test Act, a barrier erected by the founders of the constitution. It was left to whig hands, the fittest for the work of constitutional overthrow ; and the honour of pulling it down was given to a descendant of that Russell who had cemented the establishment with his blood . The Test Act might have been obsolete; the dissenters might have suddenly become lovers of the establishment ; the establishment might have sud- denly acquired some new principle of immortality ; yet the eagerness of Episcopal assent given to its overthrow, showed that some of the English prelacy had more confidence in the minister than knowledge of human nature. Other clerics, of less exalted rank, but less confiding, saw, in the very suggestion of this repeal, a summons to the consecrated guardians of Protestantism, to collect their scattered strength, to abandon their habitual dependence on politicians, and to show that the highest trust which can be re- posed in earthly hands, was not to be sacrificed to a fond security in the promises of office. — The repeal was passed, and the darkest prediction was instantly verified. It was found to be a direct preliminary to that measure, which its own chief abettor pronounced " a breach of the constitution." Yet if the nature of the repeal escaped English Gg 350 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1829, simplicity, it was deeply comprehended by Irish faction. Public meetings, assemblages in the Ro- mish chapels, proclamations to mobs, spoke trum- pet-tongued in Ireland. But to the universal as- tonishment, the vigour of the English ministry had suddenly assumed the attitude of majestic repose. The quick, vindictive vigilance of a cabinet of sol- diership had softened into the unruffled calmness of the gods of Epicurus, — all was tranquillity. The Irish papers came filled with statements of the most furious harangues, processions, and meet- ings, daylight musterings, and midnight contlagra- tions. The minister was asked hourly in parliament, " Have those things reached your ears 1 A parlia- ment is open in the Irish capital denouncing England in the most traitorous language. Will you suffer it to remain open 1 An individual of notorious popu- lar influence is making regular progresses through the country, distributing an order of knighthood of his own creation, with the colour of rebellion, and mottoes telling the people that he who would be free must himself strike the blow. Would this be endured in England 1 If a demagogue collect a mob in Manchester, the law has power to seize him. Does the passage of the Irish channel mutilate the law V On the 5th of February, 1829, a day which will be long recorded in the evil calendar of England and of Europe, the king's speech, delivered by commission, declared that the time was come for the entrance of the Roman Catholics into the Protestant legislature ! The public indignation was boundless. It recapitu- lated the solemn denials that had been given in every form to the suspicion that such a measure was intended. It recalled the unequivocal pledges that every leading member of the cabinet had personally given to the integrity of the Protestant constitution. It pointed to the express words from year to year, in which they had founded their resistance to the 1829. J THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 351 popish demands, on the principles of popery ; not on temporary considerations, but on the essential nature of the rehgion. And no member of the cabinet had spoken more unequivocally on the principles of po- pery than the Duke of Wellington. In the debate on the Marquis of Lansdowne's motion, he had said : — " The question is one merely of expediency, and I ground my opposition, not on any doctrinal points, but on the church govern- ment of the Catholics. Nobody can have looked at the transactions in Ireland for the last 150 years, without at the same time seeing, that the Roman Catholic church has acted on the principle of com- bination, and that this combination has been the in- strument by which all the evil that has been done has been effected ! We are told that whatever may be the cause of the present evils in Ireland, Catholic emancipation is the remedy. My lords, I am afraid, that if, in addition to Catholic emancipation, we were to give up to the Roman Catholics of Ireland the church establishment in Ireland, we should not have found a remedy for the evil produced by this combi- nation; unless we could find the means of connecting the Roman Catholic church with the government of the country. But, my lords, we are told there are securities. I beg leave to remind the noble marquis, and the noble and learned lord on the cross bench (Plunket), of a fact which they cannot deny, that the Catholics themselves have all along objected to secu- rities. He cannot, therefore, be surprised, that we who feel strongly on the subject should wish to feel secure as to the safety of the church and state, before we venture on such an experiment as this. " My lords, I am very much afraid that the Roman Catholic religion, in its natural state, is not very favourable to civil government in any part of Europe. And I must beg your lordships to observe, that in all the countries of Europe, the sovereigns have, at dif- ferent periods, found it necessary, as was stated by 332 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1829. my noble and learned friend (Lord Colchester) to- night, to call upon the people to assist them in the govermnetiL of their people /" On this speech no comment can be necessary. Next comes the immaculate sincerity of Mr. Peel ; his whole and sole reason for refusing to join the Canning ministry being his horror of the imputa- tion of taking any share in carrying the Catholic question ! " For a space of eighteen years,^'' said this ingenu- ous and honest personage, "I have followed one undeviating course of conduct, offering, during the whole of that time, an uncompromising, but a tempe- rate, a fair, and, as 1 believe, a constitutional resistance to the making any further concessions to the Roman Catholics ! The opinions which I held during that time I still hold ; and I thought from having always avowed these opinions, but, above all, from having while in office taken an active and, I may perhaps say, an impoiftant part against the claims of Catholics, that I could not remain in office, after events ren- dered it probable that I should be the single minister of the crown who was likely to continue opposed to themV— {Speech, \S21.) But, on Canning's introduction of the question into the house, he stated his principles of resistance. The document might figure in the history of Bubb Doddington; to some future Le Sage it will be invaluable. The Right Honourable Robert Peel said: — "Mr. Pitt has been charged with supporting the Catholic claims; but what were his words in 1805? After saying ' that he would not, under any circumstances, nor any possible situation of affairs, consent that it should be discussed or entertained as a question of right,' that minister had proceeded — ' I, sir, have never been one of those who have held that the term emancipation is, in the smallest degree, applicable to the repeal of the few remaining penal statutes to 1829.] THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 353 which the Catholics are liable. I cannot shut my eyes to the fact, that the Roman Catholic must be anxious to advance his religion.' Those were Mr. Pitt's principles ; and it was on those grounds that he (Mr. Peel) had always opposed what was termed Catholic emancipation. " Could any man, acqu-ainted with the state of the world, doubt for a moment, that there was engrafted on the Catholic religion something more than a scheme for promoting mere religion ? That there was in view the furtherance of a means by which m.an could acquire authority over man ? Could he know what the doctrine of absolution, of confession, of indulgences, was, without a suspicion that those doctrines were maintained for the purpose of establishing the power of man over the minds and hearts of men? What was it to him what the source of the power was called, if practically it was suchl "He held in his hand a proclamation, or bull, addressed by Pope Pius VII., in 1807, to the Irish Catholics, granting an indulgence of three hundred days from the pains of purgatory to those who should devoutly recite, at stated times, three short ejacu- lations, of which the first was—' Jesus ! Maria ! Joseph ! I offer to you my ardent heart !' When he saw such a mockery of all religion as this resorted to, to prop up the authority of man over man ; when he saw such absurdity as this addressed to rational Catholics, and received by rational Catholics, and pub- lished among a superstitious and illiterate populace, it was in vain to tell him that such things could be in- effective. " He thought it right to retain all the existing dis- abilities, as far as related to admitting Catholics to the legislature and to offices of state. He had felt that he had no choice, but to state with firmness, though, he trusted, without asperity, the principles which his reason dictated, and which his honour and conscience Gg2 354 GEOKGE THE FOITRTH. [1829. compelled him to maintain ! He had never adopted his opinions upon it, either from deference to high station, or that which might he more fairly expected to impress him, high ability. It was a matter of con- solation to him, that he had now an opportunity of showing his adherence to those tenets which he liad for- merly espoused ; that, if his opinions were unpopular, he stood by them still, when the influence and authority that might have given them currency were gone ; and when It was impossible, he believed, that in the mind of any human being, he could stand suspected of pursuing his prindples with any view to favour or personal aggrandizement !" — (Speech, 1837.) Copley (Lord Lyndhurst) declared, that " The ques- tion was not now as to the prevalence of the Roman Catholic religion, but it was this — Whether Protest' antism was to be continued in Ireland. And the per- son took a very narrow view oi the subject, who could entertain a doubt on the points — {Speech, 1827.) Mr. Goulburn, who had been secretary in Ireland, and been sent there, from his peculiar Protestantism, to balance any possible irregularities in the lord lieutenant's theology, declared, " That he had never attempted to conceal from himself the state of Ire- land. But he differed totally from those honourable gentlemen who fondly imagined that Catholic eman- cipation could be productive of results so beneficial as to remove its distresses. Believing, as he did, that the dangers of Catholic emancipation would be greater than its benefits, he felt himself called on to give it his decided negatived — {Speech, 1827.) Mr. George Dawson declared, " That he should not labour to prove that the admission of the Roman Catholics to the privileges of parliament was con- trary to the whole spirit of the constitution! The Roman Catholic priesthood, who exercised over their flocks such unbounded sway, were a body of men assuming and wielding political power, greater than the legislature itself. And it was to add to and con- 1829.] THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 355 solidate that power, that the honourable baronet (Burdett) had just called on the house. " The Catholic religion remained unchanged; and so long as it should continue unchanged, so long would it he necessary to oppose the claims of the Catholics."— (»^eec/i, 1827.) Each individual of those, and their fellow-officials, who all pledged themselves with equal distinctness, had founded his declarations, not upon circumstances, which might change, but upon the nature of the Romish church, which scorns the idea of change. Yet, with the interval of scarcely more than a single session, all those men faced about, as if at the tap of the drum, and delivered their convictions yor the measure, against which they had declared those con- victions unalterable. The converts ! were instantly taunted in the strong- est language of national scorn. The most contempt- uous phrases that human disdain could invent were heaped upon them. The brand w^as burned on them to the bone. But by what sullen influence, or with what ultimate purpose, this unaccountable change was wrought, must be left to that investigation which sits upon the tomb, and declares the infinite emptiness of the amplest reward for which a public man barters the respect of his country. \ et, one of the most painful features of the entire traiisaction was the scandal of an individual whose sacred office ought to have secured him from so deep a fall. On the night of the final debate, in which the primates of England and Ireland declared their strongest abhorrence of the ministerial measure, Lloyd, bishop of Oxford, who had voted against it in the preceding session, put himself forward as its de- fender. The chief part of his speech was the ram- bling declamation which was familiar to the house. But he had a novelty in reserve. " I have heard it charged against noble lords," said this miserable man, " that they are introducing men into the house 356 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1829 whose religion they have already sworn to be idola- trous. Now, I acknowledge that I have taken that oath. I have sworn that the invocation of saints and the sacrifice of the mass are idolatry; but I have not sworn that all papists are guilty of idola- try. Some of their actions may be idolatrous, and «ome, in my solemn judgment, have a tendency to dolatry itself. But if they are not wilfully and in- tentionciily guilty of idolatry, they are not, in my opinion, guilty of idolatry before God." Even the house listened with astonishment to this monstrous doctrine. On this principle, crime must depend altogether on the name. If the murderer can but persuade himself that he stabs for the public or for the priest, he is a murderer no longer. The crime is not in the breach of the law of man, nor in the insult to the law of God, but in the fancy of the criminal. This was the true Romish principle, on which the slaughter of heretics is still justified ; the deed is done, not for bloodshed, but for saintship ; not to kill the body, but to save the soul ; and thus is massacre a virtue ! The Israelite, dancing round the golden calf, should have known this argument, and proved that Moses was a persecutor. The Athenian idolater should have learned in the school of the Oxford professor, and beaten St. Paul out of the field. Both had only to say, that in worshipping idols, in praying to them, offering incense, and ex- pecting the cure of diseases and the remission of sins from them, they did not intend to commit idola- try, — and they were idolaters no more. The public received the announcement of this theory of crime with the bitterest reprobation. The logician despised the shallowness of the sophist. — The cleric shrank from the doctrine of the divine. Its utterer was undone. He was compared to Par- ker, the basest of apostates, also bishop of Oxford. The public journals tore up his doctrine and his character together. No man can long resist this 1829.] THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 357 Storm, unless he find strength within. The wretched prelate made no defence : he shrank from the inflic- tion ; and in a single month from the time of his fata] speech, the defender of idplatry was in his grave. Yet this was the man who could thus describe Irish popery, and in the very same speech. Nothing can be more true or more formidable than the descrip- tion. " The dangers of the church of Ireland come not from within, but from without. She is brought into competition with a rival church — a church neither missionary nor established, but pretending to' be established, in a country in which there is already a church established by law ; this church having at its head two-and-twenty bishops, nominally appointed by the pope, but really, at least in general, elected by themselves — bishops connected together not only by the ties of their peculiar religion, but by the bands which unite the fellows of a college — having under them, as it is stated, a body of three thousand five hundred clergy, plac6d beyond the pale and protec- tion of the law, in their spiritual relation ; and in n9 way responsible to the law ! — men entirely under the control and superintendence of the bishops, remova- ble at will, having no appeal to the king's courts, in case of a suspension ecclesiastically irregular ; and, in truth, in every point submitted to the arbitrary authority of the bishops ; — these clergy again exer- cising over their flocks the most unlimited influence, the most undisputed sway ; and doing this chiefly by the tenets of their religion, which places the consciences of their votaries altogether at their disposal P^ — {Speech on the Relief Bill, April 2, 1829.) The measure was carried by a majority of 105 ! in the lords, where it had been always thrown out with disdain. The whole people petitioned in vain. The London petition alone was signed by upwards of a hundred thousand householders. Thousands and hun- dreds of thousands of the gentry and professional 358 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1829 classes of England sent up the strongest remon- strances to the legislature. Still the measure was urged on; it was voted through; all entreaties for time to take the public sense on a question which touched the birthright of every freeman of England were refused. " Come to the vote" was the dictato- rial language of those who knew that whatever they might want in argument they made up in numbers. The measure was haughtily carried, and Roman Catholics were made members of that legislature which, by their religious tenets, they pronounce to be impious and heretical; governors of that people which they pronounce to be incapable of salvation ; arbiters of that civil and religious freedom which it is the first principle of popery lo extinguish in all kingdoms ; and counsellors of that king whom Rome denounces as a revolter from its fealty and its religion. But if the measure had been the quintessence of public good, it would have been scandalized by the nature of its origin. No man could be found to ac- knowledge its parentage then ; it is cast fatherless on the world even now. Instead of the openness which ought to have eminently distinguished a ques- tion, affecting not a party, but an empire, — not a ses- sion, but the last hour at which England may boast of a parliament, — all was mystery. Its councils were all carried on in whispers. As the time approached, the secrecy grew more mystical ; the curtains were drawn closer round the cabinet ; the chief justice who drew the bill, after the task had been indignantly refused by the attorney-general. Sir Charles Wether ell, was merged in a darkness so profound, that it has never left him since. The master of the mint's right hand did not know what his left was doing. The chancellor of the exchequer made sermons, or speeches like sermons, of triple the usual length and sanctity. The home secretary itinerated the country, with a smile and a speech for every village, and panegyrized steam engines and the constitution. 1829.] THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 369 The premier himself was so unconscious of what was passing, that he wrote the following billet, evi- dently as a matter of familiar intercourse, to an Irish friend, who had expressed some curiosity to know the news of London: — " My dear Sir, — I have received your letter of the 4th instant; and I assure you, you do me justice in believing that I am sincerely anxious to witness the settlement of the Roman Catholic question, which, by benefiting the state, would confer a benefit on every individual belonging to it. "But I confess / see no prospect of such a settle- ment. Party has been mixed up with the considera- tion of the question to such a degree, and such vio- lence pervades every discussion of it, that it is im- possible to expect to prevail on men to consider it dis- passionately. " If we could bury it in oblivion for a short time and employ that time diligently in the consideration of its difficulties on all sides (for they are very great), I should not despair of seeing a satisfactory remedy. " Believe me, my dear Sir, " WELLINGTON. '' London, Dec. 11. 1822" This letter was addressed to Dr. Curtis, the head of the Irish Roman Catholic priesthood : and, trans- mitted to such hands, it of course came instantly before the public. The Irish laughed at the style, and said that in " burying matters in oblivion for a time" and " employing the same time in considering them," they recognised their countryman. But the English, who overlook those things in a military pre- mier, universally regarded the billet as precisely of the same class with those which the whigs had writ- ten whenever they had a hope of power ; the, easy, official form of getting rid of the claimants alto- gether. • 360 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1829. In six weeks from the date of this unsuspecting let- ter, the measure was proclaimed with all pomp and . ceremonial in the king's speech ! So brief is obli- vion, and so blind is sagacity. But the people had a sagacity of their own, that saw further than the simple optics of the cabinet. In the midst of the minister's prospects of eternal conciliation, of amity treading on perpetual flowers, and national friendship taming down the wild pas- sions and rugged jealousies of the people, like an other Cybele, scattering oil and wine from a chariot drawn by lions ; while the home secretary revelled in poetic raptures, and even the premier relaxed the rigidity of the ministerial brow ; while Scylla " Chid her barking waves into attention, And fell Charj'bdis murmured soft applause ;" the people declared that the evil day had been only precipitated ; that the Irish demagogues, instead of receiving the measure as a pledge of peace, would turn it into an immediate instrument of turbulence ; that they would see nothing in it but a proof that clamour, aggression, and intimidation were the true weapons for their cause, and that the more they asked, and the more insolently they asked it, the surer they were to succeed. Ministers were told — *' Popery never required any thing but power, and never made any other use of it than to perplex and crush the Protestant. If you give that power; if you send the Roman Catholic back to Ireland, not the petitioner that he came, but the conqueror, clothed in the spoils of the constitution ; if you put the cup into his hand, out of which the first drop thrown on the ashes of rebellion will blaze up into inextinguishable flame ; you will have to thank only yourselves for the deepest hazards that ever tried the empire." The prediction was scoffed at ; and now, within 1829.] THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 361 a twelvemonth, we have a demand for " the repeal of the Union," which would end in a separation of the countries, a summons openly issued for a popish parliament, and the proposed organization of a na- tional army on the model of the volunteers of 1782 ! We have a startled proclamation of the Irish lord- lieutenant, declaring that designs dangerous to the public peace are on foot, and threatening the ven- geance of the law on this " conciliated" people. We nave an answering proclamation from the Catholic " agitators," declaring that the Irish government thinks itseU justified in trampling on the people ; that " the want of a domestic and national legislature in Ireland will find means to make itself known ! and that those means will be irresistible /" So much for mili- tary legislation ! The whole of Europe looked with the keenest anx- iety to the discussion of the Catholic question ; and its continental results are felt already. All the minor Protestant states, which relied on England as their protectress, were alarmed by finding that her legislature had changed its character. All the po- pish states triumphantly regarded the measure as an approach to their system. But the example of a parliament submissive to the extent of " breaking in upon the free constitution," of which the empire had boasted for one hundred and thirty years, chiefly caught the tastes of the French king, who instantly resolved upon making the experiment of a submissive parliament, — finding the old one stubborn, cashiered it, — to procure a new one for his purpose, would have cashiered the constitution, — was defeated in the at- tempt, — and has now bequeathed the tremendous evi- dence of popular strength to the partisans of revolu- tion throughout the woild. And those are but the first results of the " great healing measure" of Ca- tholic Emancipation! Hh 352 GEORGE THE FOtJRTH. [1829. [The advocates of Catholic emancipation stood on the broad basis of the rights of man — they insisted on the miiversally acknovvledg-ed principle, "that among' the natural rights which man retains are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind: conse- quently religion is one of those rights." Every man, when he applies his judgment to the religion of his neighbour, is conscientiously bound to allow that his adoption of it was the act of a free agent ; and whether it agree with or differ from that which has received the civil sanction of the State, he is only warranted and justified in concluding that by adopting it, he has exercised that liberty of conscience which supersedes all power and control of the civil magistrate. Es- seniially wnjust^ then, is every civil or temporal law which persecutes man for his religious persuasion, by pretending to annul or abridge his liberty of conscience. How the measure of Catholic emancipation could have been resisted, or even retarded, by good and enlightened men, acknowledging the truth and the finess of this principle, cannot be easily explained. That the spirit of temporizing has long hovered over this measure, must be admitted. By reflecting on the influence of this spirit, Ave may, in some measure, account for the apathy of some and the antipathies of many of the statesmen who afterward became the most active and distinguished friends of the Catholics. We see it generally as an involuntary affection of the mind, produced by some cause which has first subdued or rendered it for the time incapable of its freedom of deliberation, and deprived it of its wonted energy and vigour in action. Various are the causes which operate this effect — pride, joy, success, and prosperity, the intrigues, flattery, and seduction of others, the weakness, blindness and perverseness of ourselves. It is not the isolated affection of one hu- man being, but the gregarious quality of a whole so- ciety. To prevent it absolutely at all times, is a moral impossibility ; to check it at any time, is a mat- 1829.J THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 363 ter of extreme difficulty ; to correct it before disas- ter works the cure, is the most honourable though unthankful office of the lover of his country. That this spirit militates against discussion and investiga- tion, is self-evident. The struggling efforts of truth are often overpowered by this impetuous torrent — her voice is drowned, and her very being is borne away, undistinguished from the angry and turbid stream. No wonder, then, that the progress of the Catholic cause was slow ; the wonder is, how it could have made any advances. It was opposed with en- ergy and earnestness. This opposition created cor- respondent feelings in its advocates, until ai length they rescued it from the darkness with which bigotry and ignorance covered it, and restored to the Catho- lics those rights, of which it is now universally ad- mitted they had been cruelly and unjustly deprived. The opponents of the Catholic claims urged their rejection on the plea that the constitution of Great Britain was a Protestant constitution. To this it was answered, that it was originally Catholic ; that it was founded by Catholics; that the great laws to which the people owed their liberty were the work of Catholics ; that at the time of the Revolution no change was made in the constitution, and that then nothing was done beyond making a declaration of right, because they could not go farther than the Catholics had gone ; that the bill of rights was a de- claratory law ; it was declaratory of the rights ob- tained by our Catholic ancestors. Hence it was con- cluded, that the Protestants had no exclusive right laid down, and that they have no exclusive right to the constitution. The charge of moral atrocity was also met by the declarations of the Catholic prelates, who stated that it was not the doctrine of the Catholic church to sup- port or obey any foreign temporal power, and that to break faith with heretics was no part of their creed. It was also urged, on the side of the Catholics, that 364 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1829. the charge of moral atrocity could not be sustained against them without libelling the Christian religion : monstrous crimes are incompatible with the Christian religion which they profess, and the argument of moral atrocity would not make against the Catholic religion alone, but against Christianity in general. The reasoning went to this, that the religion of Christ- endom was an abomination ; and if an abomination, they were emphatically asked why they tolerated it. From the charge of moral atrocity the opponents of the Catholics passed to the assertion, that their emancipation would be incompatible with the safety of England. The plain meaning of this is, that no man could be a good British subject unless he be- longed to the established church. In answer, it was shown that the Irish Parliament declared that the Catholics were good subjects. In 1791, they stated that it was necessary for the security of the country to give them a share of political power. That par- liament gave them the privilege of holding landed property, and put arms in their hands. It was enacted, " that it shall and may be lawful for papists, or per- sons professing the Popish religion, to hold, exercise, and enjoy all civil and military offices, or places of trust and profit under his Majesty." The history of Ireland has been appealed to as furnishing strong arguments in favour of the oppo- nents of this question. To this it was replied, that the historian in the case of Ireland is, generally speaking, peculiarly bad authority. He wrote to gratify power, and he flattered it ; his own private advantage absorbed all his thoughts, and his contem- plation only dwelt on that which might be turned to his own account, or that of his employers. They were called on to state the case of Ireland fairly, and not to fly back to barbarous times and long exploded principles ; to state her transactions since she became a nation, not to go back to senseless follies ; not to say, on this spot such a crime was committed, on 1830.] TBE CATHOLIC Q;UESTI«N. 365 this spot such a chieftain raised his rebellious stand- ard. They were called on to come at once to the point, and say, here a Catholic regiment held its ground, and nobly shared the dangers of that battle the laurels of which it was not destined to share. — These arguments prevailed, and Irishmen can now fight the battles of their country, fr^e as they are brave.' — American Publishers.] 1830. — The life of George the Fourth was now hastening to its close. He had lost his brother, the Duke of York,* to whom he had been peculiarly at- tached, and whose death was sincerely mourned by both king and people. For some years his majesty had been affected by complaints which must have imbittered even royal enjoyments. He had frequent returns of the gout, and it was subsequently ascer- tained that the valves of the heart were partially os- sified ; yet a remarka±»le strength of constitution sus- tained him : to the last, his manners were courtly, his conversation was animated, and his recollection of persons and circumstances singularly quick and interesting. But the severe winter of 1829, by de- priving him of exercise in the open air, disposed him to dropsical symptoms. He resided in the Lodge at Windsor, a retreat too dreary for an invalid. Slight fits of an indisposition were rumoured, from the be- ginning of the year ; but on the 15th of April a bulletin was issued, stating that he suffered under a bilious attack, accompanied by embarrassment in his breathing. He partially recovered, and transacted public business ; in which, however, from feebleness, he was obliged to delegate the sign-manual to com- missioners. But, for nearly a month before his death, his majesty was aware of his situation ; and, though not without hopes of life, he felt the ne- cessity of preparing for the ^eat change. About the ♦ 5th January, 1827. Hh2 366 GEORGE THE FOURTH. [1830. middle of June his physicians were said to have in- timated that medicine could do no more ; an an- nouncement which he received with manly and deco- rous resignation, uttering the words, " God's will be done !" On the 24th of June his majesty became still more exhausted, and remained chiefly in a kind of slumber for the next forty-eight hours. On the 26th, at three in the morning, the attendant was startled by his suddenly rising from his bed, and expressing some inward pain; a fit of coughing came on while he was in his physician's arms ; he ejaculated, " Oh God ! I am dying ;" in a few seconds after, he said, " This is death ;" and, at a quarter past three, ex- pired. The details which have been already given of his majesty's life prevent the necessity of making any immediate remarks on his character. Some state- ments of those early errors into which he was drawn by the strong temptations that beset a prince, and some traits of the individuals who rendered them selves disgracefully conspicuous by administering t@ those errors, have been intentionally omitted. Their insertion here would be repulsive to the feelings of the writer, and of no advantage to the reader. The progress of the arts, of which his majesty was a liberal patron, — the improvements of London, chiefly due to his taste, — and the general intellectual progress of the empire during his reign, — all topics of interest, are necessarily restricted by the limits of the volume. As to the personal opinions delivered in these pages, the writer has had no object in them but truth; and, not feeling disposed to turn away from its avowal, nor to stoop to the arts by which dupli- city thrives, he has told the truth with the plainness that becomes a subject of England. To any remarks 1830.] CONCLUDING REMARKS. 367 that may be made on such plainness from one of his profession, he gives the unanswerable reply — that it is his profession which ought to take the lead in all truth ; that if it have ever suffered its brow to be humbled by honours ignobly won, or its free limbs to be entangled in tlie cloak of the hireling, it owes a duty to itself to show that this baseness is against its nature ; it owes a duty to its holy religion to show that a churchman may be in earnest, when, with the Scriptures in his hand, he declares, that there are higher objects for the immortal spirit than the mixed and vulgar temptations of our corrupted state of society; and that, "being content with food and raiment," the Christian should leave personal and public meanness to their reward; shrink from the degrading elevation, which is to be gained only by leaving conscience behind ; and seek no honours but those which are alike above human passion and human change. APPENDIX. A CONSIDERABLE number of anecdotes of his late Majesty have appeared in the newspapers, the principal of which will be found here. Their employment in the " Memoir" would have been unsuitable from their miscellaneous nature, and their having been too much before the public for a claim to novelty. However, they throw light on character, and as such are worth retaining. ANECDOTES, &c. From the moment of the prince's birth, he became an object of the strongest national interest. He was a remark- ably fine infant ; and his birth and the queen's safety so much delighted the king (George the Third), that he spon- taneously presented 500Z. to the messenger who brought him the glad tidings. A scene of universal joy ensued. Every town in England had its gala, and every village its bonfire. The ladies who called at the palace were admitted into the queen's bedroom to see the child, about forty at a time ; the part containing the bed being screened off by a sort of lattice-work. The royal infant lay in a most splendid cradle of velvet and Brussels lace, adorned with gold ; while two young ladies of the court, in virgin white, stood to rock the cradle, and the nurse at its head sat with a crimson velvet cushion, occasionally to receive the child and present it to its mother. The cradle was placed on a small eleva- tion under a canopy of state. The head and the sides, which came no higher than the bed, were covered with crimson velvet, and lined with white satin. From the head rose an ornament of carved work, gilt, with the coronet in the middle. The upper sheet was covered with very broad, beautiful Brussels lace, turning over the top upon a magni- 370 GEORGE THE FOTTRTH. ficent quilt of crimson velvet and gold lace; the \vhoIe length of the Brussels lace appearing also along the sides, and hanging down from underneath. v The children were reared in the homely English manner most conducive to health. The account of a visiter was : — *' The royal children rise early, generally at six, breakfast at eight, live on the simplest food, and are much in the open air. I have been several evenings in the queen's lodge with no other company than the family. They sit round a large table, on which are books, work, pencils, and paper. While the younger part of the family are drawing and working, the beautiful babe Amelia is sometimes in the lap of one of her sisters, and sometimes playing with the king on the carpet." " All the princesses and princes had a commerce table." " I seldom miss going to early prayers at the king's chapel, at eight o'clock, where I never fail of seeing their majesties and all the royal family." " In the evening every one is employed with pencil, needle, or knitting ; between the pieces of music the conversation is easy and pleasant, and the king plays at backgammon with one of his equer- ries." *' Their majesties rise at six, and enjoy the two suc- ceeding hoars, which they call their own; at eight, the Prince of Wales, the Bishop of Osnaburgh, &c. are brought from their several houses to Kew, to breakfast with their parents. At nine, the younger children are brought in; and while the five elder are closely applying to their books, the little ones pass the whole morning in Richmond gardens. The king and queen frequently sit in the room while the children dine, and in the evening all the children again pay their duty at Kew House before they retire to bed." About 1769, party fury raged throughout the land, and the queen wished to conciliate the pubhc mind by exhibit- ing the endearments of domestic life. The jvLven^e fetes at the palace were numerous ; and the infant Prince of Wales (seven years old) was always dressed in scarlet and gold, with the insignia of the Garter ; while the Duke of York APPENDIX. 371 (five years old), as bishop of Osnaburgh, was in blue and gold, with the insignia of the Bath. His royal highness had been elected Bishop of Osnaburgh on the 27th of February, 1764 ; and having been born on the 16th of August, 1763, he was exactly six months and ten days old when he became a bishop ! He received the order of the Bath on the 30th of December, 1767, and was installed in Henry the Eighth's chapel, June 15, 1772 ; and, as principal companion of the Garter, was installed at Windsor on the 25th of the same month. In this year, 1769, his majesty caused a drawing-room to be held by the Prince of Wales ; and the novelty excited much attention. The king had an aversion to Wilkes and the No. 45. The Prince of Wales, in his ninth year, had been severely punished for some fault, and he took a laughable mode of revenge. Going to the king's bedroom door, before he was up, he kept beating on the panels, and roaring out " Wilkes for ever ! — No. 45 for ever !" until the king burst into laugh- ter and had him removed. The system of discipline now established was severe, and the prince was excluded from the society of youth of his own age, and subjected to a mechanical precision of habits. Eight hours every day were devoted to hard study at the desk. He rose at six, and breakfasted at eight. He and the Duke of York had a farm in Kew Park, which they culti- vated under the guidance of Mr. Arthur Young. They ploughed and sowed the land, reaped the com, and went through every process with their own hands, up to the making of the bread. A private purse of limited extent was given to the youth, and his expenditure of the money was strictly scrutinized, and attended with either praise or cen sure. Some idea maybe formed of George the Third's notions of discipline and manners, by the fact that it having been reported to his majesty, in 1772, that Archbishop Corn- 372 GEORGE THE FOURTH. (vallis had frequent convivial parties at his palace, the mo narch immecQately addressed to him the following- admoni- tory letter : " My GOOD Lord Primate, — I could not delay giving you the notification of the grief and concern with which my breast was affected at receiving authentic information that routs had made their way into your palace. At the same time, I must signify to you my sentiments on this subject which hold these levities and vam dissipations as utterly in- expedient, if not unlawful, to pass in a residence for many centuries devoted to divine studies, religious retirement, and the extensive exercise of charity and benevolence ; I add, in a place where so many of your predecessors have led their lives in such sanctity as has thrown lustre on the pure reli- gion they professed and adorned. From the dissatisfaction with which you must perceive I behold these improprieties, not to speak in harsher terms, and in still more pious prin- ciples, I trust you will suppress them immediately ; so that I may not have occasion to show any further marks of my displeasure, or to interpose in 'a. different manner. May God take your grace into his almighty protection ! I remain, my lord primate, your gracious friend. " G. R." The following paragraph appeared in the London news papers in the month of May, 1771, relative to a circumstance which excited some interest about the Court at St. James's. " The following are the particulars relative to the impropei behaviour of the person who struck his royal highness Prince William Henry (his present majesty). The Prince of Wales, the Bishop of Osnaburgh, Prince William Henry* &c. were at play in one of the apartments, and the head of one of their drums being out, the young gentlemen pre- vailed on the attendant to get into the drum-hoop that thejf might draw her about. Prince William (who is full of hu mour) contrived to throw her down ; when she, in her fool- ish resentment, flung tiim against the wainscot. The king was told of it, who ordered her to go to St. James's, and remain there till Lady Charlotte Finch came to town, as his majesty did not choose to interfere in such matters. On Lady Charlotte's arrival she examined into the particu- APPENDIX. 373 lars, when another of the attendants said that the person ac- cused did not strike the prince. The Prince of Wales (his late majesty) being present, said, 'Pray Mrs. do not assert any such thing ; you know she did strike my bro- ther ; but you are both Scotch women, and will say any thing to protect each other.' His royal highness's answer occasioned much diversion." The late king was remarkably good-natured ; and from the numerous anecdotes that have transpired since his death, we can fully believe Colonel M'Mahon's dying character ot him, as " one of the kindest-hearted men alive." There were intervals when, in the various vexations of his per- plexed career, he may have given way to anger ; but they were few and always momentary. The slight incidents that follow are proofs that kindness was the natural temper- ament of his mind. " Nearly forty years ago, his late majesty, then Prince of Wales, was so exceedingly urgent to have 8001. at an hour on such a day, and in so un"sual a manner, that the gentle- man who furnished the supply had some curiosity to know for what purpose it was obtained. On inquiry, he was in- formed, that the moment the money arrived the prince drew on a pair of boots, pulled off his coat and waistcoat, slipped on a plain morning frock without a star, and turning his hair to the crown of his head, put on a slouched hat, and thus walked out. This intelligence rai&ed still greater cu- riosity, and with some trouble the gentleman discovered the object of the prince's mysterious visit. An officer of the army had just arrived from America with a wife and six children, in such low circumstances, that to satisfy some clamorous creditor he was on the point of selling his com- mission, to the utter ruin of his family. The prince by ac- cident overheard an account of the case. To prevent a worthy soldier suffering, he procured the money ; and that no mistake might happen, carried it himself. On asking at an obecure lodging-house in a court near Covent Garden for the lodger, he was shown up to his room, and there found the family in the utmost distress. Shocked at the sight, he not only presented the money, but told the officer to apply Ii 374 GEORGE THE FOURTH. to Colonel Lake, living in street, and give some ac- count of liimself in future ; saying which, he departed, with- out the family knowing to whom they were obliged." Some years since an artist, being at Carlton Palace, ob- served to the late Mr. , one of the royal establishment — " How I should like to see the council-table prepared for the council !" " Your wish shall be gratified," said his friend. It happened that a council was to be held that very day. They proceeded to the apartment : when there, the artist, smiling, observed, " Now, if I were to judge of your royal master only by what I see, I should conclude that he was very little-minded." " And why so ?" inquired Mr. . " Because I perceive, first and foremost, that all the chairs for the council are exactly equidistant ; se- condly, that there are so many sheets of foolscap, and so many sheets ( *" post, and a long new pen laid diagonally on each, and ail at measured mathematical distances ; and, thirdly, that the \ery fold of the green cloth" — fine broad- cloth, which covered the long table — " is exactly in the centre of the table." " You are a quiz" said the officer of the household. " Would I could put on the invisible cap," resumed the gentleman, " that I might see and hear what passes, when the regent is seated in that golden chair."* " Perhaps you might be disappointed in your ex- pectations ; but," added his friend, in a low voice, " if, sir, you could see and hear what I have seen and heard, and what will probably occur again after this day's council, you might feel Uttle disposed to relate what you had seen with levity." The officer of the household then took a sheet of paper from the table, walked to the fireside, placed his right arm on the marble chimney-piece, while he held the paper in his left hand, and looking the artist in the face, said : " Sir, fancy him this day, after the breaking up of the council, standing thus, and the recorder of London standing in your place, bearing the list of the miserable culprits doomed to death by the sentence of the law. How little * The council was held in the throne room ; but his royal highness, then regent, sat at the head of the table, in a high-backed gilt chair. APPENDIX. 375 do they or the world know, that the most powerful pleader for a remission of their punishment is the prince ! — ^while, one by one, he inquires the nature of the offence in all its bearings, the measure of the guilt of the oifender, and whe- ther the law absolutely demands the life of the criminal, — - palliating the offence by all the arguments becoming him, who, as the ruler of the nation, is the Fountain of Mercy. Yes, sir, nearly two hours have I known the prince plead thus, in the presence of the minister of justice, for those who had no other counsellor." THK LATE KING AND HIS SERVANTS. Among almost innumerable instances of the feeling of cur late sovereign, may be here related one which occurred many years ago, while he was Prince of Wales. Being at Brighton, and going rather earlier than usual to visit his stud, he inquired of a groom, "Where is Tom Cross?* is he unwell ? I have missed him for some days." " Please your royal highness, he is gone away." " Gone away ! — what fori" "Please your royal highness (hesitating), I believe — for — Mr. can inform your roval highness." " I desire to know, sir, of you ; — ^what has he done ]" " I believe — ^your royal highness — something — not — quite cor- rect — something about the oats." " Where is Mr. If — send him to me unmediately." The prince appeared much disturbed at the discovery. The absent one, quite a youth, had been employed in the stable, and was the son of an old groom who had died in the prince's service. The officer of the stable appeared before the prince. " Where is Tom Cross ? — ^what has become of him ]" " I do not know, your royal highness." " What has he been doing V* " Purloining the oats, your royal highness ; and I dis- charged him." " What, sir, send him away without ac- quainting me ! — not know whither he is gone ! a fatherless boy driven into the world from my service with a blighted character ! Why, the poor fellow will be destroyed : fie, • ! I did not expect this from you ! Seek him out, sir, * TMs name ia assumed. f A. superior of the stable department 376 GEORGE THE FOURTH. and let me not see you until you have discovered him/ Tom was found, and brought before his royal master. H,« hung down his head, while the tears trickled from his eyes. After looking steadfastly at him for some moments, " Tom, Tom," said the prince, " what have you been doing 1 Happy it is for your poor father that he is gone ; it would have broken his heart to see you in such a situation. I hope this is your first offence." The youth wept bitterly. " Ah, Tom, I am glad to see that you are penitent. Your father was an honest man ; I had a great regard for him : so I should have for you, if you were a good lad, for his sake. Now, if I desire Mr. to take you into the stable again, do you think that I may trust yoa ?' Tom wept still more vehemently, implored forgiveness, and promised re- formation. " Well, then," said the gracious prince, " you shall be restored. Avoid evil company : go, and recover your character : be diligent, be honest, and make me your friend : and — ^hark ye, Tom — I will take care that no one shall ever taunt you with what is past." Some years since, a gentleman, while copying a picture in one of the state apartments at Carlton House, overheard the following conversation between an elderly woman, one of the housemaids, then employed in cleaning a stove-grate, and a glazier, who was supplying a broken pane of glass : " Have you heard how the prince is to-day 1" said he (his royal highness had been confined by illness). " Much bet- ter," was the reply. " I suppose," said the glazier, " you are glad of that ;" subjoining, " though, to be sure, it canH concern you much." "It does concern me," replied the housemaid ; " for I have never been ill but his royal highness has concerned himself about me, and has always been pleased, on my coming to work, to say, ' I am glad to see you about again ; I hope you have been taken good care of; do not exert yourself too much, lest you be ill again.* If I did not rejoice at his royal highness's recovery, ay, and every one who eats his bread, we should be ungrateful indeed !" APPENDIX. 377 PREDTCTION. **I remember," says the Margravine of Anspach, in her Life, "a singular anecdote "which was related to me by Mr. Wyndham (a man totally devoid of superstition), which had arisen from a story told me by the Prince of Wales. At the end of the last century Sir William Wyndham, being on his travels through Venice, observed accidentally, as he Was passing through St. Mark's Place in his cabriolet, a more than ordinary crowd at one comer of it. On stopping, he found it was a mountebank who had occasioned it, and who was pretending to tell fortunes, conveying his predic- tions to the people by means of a long, narrow tube of tin, which he lengthened or curtailed at pleasure, as occasion required. Sir William, among others, held up a piece of money, on which the charlatan immediately directed his tube to his cabriolet, and said to him, very distinctly, in Italian, * Signor Inglase, cavete il bi?.nco cavallo.' "This circumstance made a very forcible impression upon liim, from the recollection that some few years before, when very young, having been out at a stag-hunt, in re- turning home jfrom the sport he found several of the servants at his father's gate, standing round a fortune-teller, who either was or pretended to be both deaf and dumb, and for a small remuneration wrote on the bottom of a trencher, with a piece of chalk, answers to such questions as the servants put to him by the same method. As Sir William rode by, the man made signs to him that he was willing to tell him his fortune as well as the rest, — and in good-hu- mour he would have complied ; but as he could not recol- lect any particular question to ask, the man took the tren- cher, and, writing upon it, gave it back, with these words ■ Written legibly, ' Beware of a white horse.' Sir William smiled at the absurdity, and totally forgot the circumstance, till the coincidence at Venice reminded him of it. He im- mediately and naturally imagined that the English fortune- teller had made his way over to the continent, where he bad found his speech ; and he was now curious to know the truth of the circumstance. Upon inquiry, however, he felt assured that the fellow had never been out of Italy, nor understood any other language than his own. " Sir William Wyndham had a great share in the trans* Ii2 378 GEORGE THE FOURTH. actions of government during the last four years of Queen Anne^s reign, in which a design to restore the son of Jame« II. to the British throne, which his father had forfeited, was undoubtedly concerted ; and on the arrival of George I. many persons were punished, by being put into prison or sent into banishment. Among the former of those who had entered into this combination was Sir William Wynd- ham, who, in 1715, was committed as a prisoner to the Tower. Over the iimer gate were the arms of Great Bri- tain, in which there was then some alteration to be made, in consequence of the succession of the house of Brunswick ; and as Sir William's chariot was passing through, conveying him to his prison, the painter was at work adding the wliite horse, which formed the arms of the Elector of Hanover. It struck Sir WilHam forcibly. He immediately recollected the two singular predictions, and mentioned them to the lieutenant of the Tower, then in the chariot with him, and to almost every one who came to see him there during his confinement ; and, although probably not inclined to super- stition, he looked upon it as a prophecy which was fully accomplished. But in this he was much mistaken ; for, many years after, being out hunting, he had the misfortune to be thrown while leaping a ditch, by which accident he broke his neck. He rode upon a white horse. " The Prince of Wales, who delighted in this kind of stories, told me that one day, at Brighton, riding in com- pany with Sir John Lade, and unattended (which they fre- quently were), they had prolonged their ride across the downs farther than they had intended. An unexpected shower of rain coming on, they made the best of their way to a neighbouring house, which proved to be that of a miller. His royal highness dismounting quickly, Sir John took hold of the horse's bridle till some one should make his appearance. A boy came up and relieved Sir John of his charge. The rain soon abating, the prince, on the point of remounting his horse, observed that the boy who held the bridle had two thumbs upon his hand, and, in- quiring who he was, was informed by him that he was the miller's son. It brought immediately to his recollection that old prophecy of Mother Shipton, that when the prince*f bridle should be h^ld by a miller's son with two thumbs on one hand, there would be great com-nlsions in the kingdom. APPENDIX. 379 The circumstance was laughable, and his royal highness was much amused at the singularity of it." PORTRAITS OF THE LATK KiNQ. It is well known that the queen, from the infancy of the Prince of Wales, was through life much attached to him. Soon after his birth, her majesty had a whole-length portrait of his royal highness modelled in wax. He was represented naked. This figure was half a span long, lying upon a crimson cushion, and it was covered by a bell-glass. Her majesty had it constantly on her toilette at Buckingham House, and there it was seen by the visiters after her ma- jesty's decease. The likeness was still palpable, though the original had outli\ ed the date of the fairy model more than half a century. Few years passed, it is believed, with- out her majesty having his portrait, in miniature, enamel, silhouette J modelled in marble or wax, or in some other style of art. In one of the state apartments at "Windsor, there is a family piece representing the queen seated with, as it would appear, two of the royal children ; one on the lap, a few months old, exceedingly fair; the other a sturdy infant, aged apparently about two years. Those are described as the Prince of Wales and Duke of York. Some years since, his late majesty, going round the col- lection, and describing the pictures to a foreigner of distinc- tion, stopped at this family piece. Mr. Legg, the principal cicerone, had just described it as usual to the party, when the condescendi'ng monarch observed, "You must alter your history, Mr. Legg." Then smiling, and addressing himself not only to the foreign gentleman, but to the whole party, he observed, " That picture was painted by the ingenious Mr. Allan Ramsay, son of the celebrated author of ' The Gentle Shepherd.' Now, Mr. Ramsay having like his father become celebrated too, fell into the common fault of portrait- painters — ^undertaking more than he could perform. He engaged to paint within a given time the Queen and the Prince of Wales, then an infant in arms, as you per- oseive. He completed the likeness of the mother, who migM 380 GEORGE THE FOURTH have waited, but somehow neglected to finish the child until he had grown into the sturdy boy you see standing before her." So that in fact it is two portraits of the same child, though in that short space more dissimilar to each other than perhaps at any subsequent period. Dibdin, in his "Musical Tour," relates the following anecdote of the Prince of Wales : — " By his royal highness's appointment, I had the great honour to sing to his royal highness, at the house of a friend, twenty songs, all of which received perfect approbation. The prince remained two hours, even though Marchesi had, during the interval, made his first appearance at the King's Theatre. His royal highness, upon my singing the 'High- mettled Racer,' informed the company that he had fortu- nately about a fortnight before rescued a poor, old, half-blind race-horse from the galling shafts of a hackney post-chaise." George IV. must no doubt have often heard from his early whig associates, that every person who sets foot on British ground becomes free, and that it matters not, as regards the point of freedom, whether a man is white, black, brown, olive, or yellow. His majesty had all the antipathy of a Virginia negro-driver to blacks. A naval peer incurred irretrievable disgrace by an attempt to carry through the for- malities of presentation a wealthy half-breed from Calcutta; and Cramer, the musician, nearly lost his situation of leader of the royal band by a similar piece of imprudence. The story, as regards Cramer, runs thus : — The fiddling gene ralissimo was bent on having a black man to beat the kettle- drum ; but aware of his majesty's antipathy to the sable tribe, he was in despair of ever bemg able to accomplish his wishes, when he met by chance with a native Englishman of so dark a hue, that at a short distance he might easily be mistaken for an importation from the coast of Guinea. Cramer had the man forthwith installed in the oflace of ket- tle-drummer, and now came the trying scene of his introduc- tion to the royal presence. On the king's entering the APPENDIX. 381 tousic-room, he started, and seemed much displeased ; but after approaching a little nearer, and applying a glass to his eye, he called Cramer to him. " I see, sir," said the king, " you wish to accustom me to a black drummer by degrees.'* When Prince of Wales he patronised many of the emi- nent actors. To Jack Johnstone he was particularly kind. Meeting him one day on the Steyne, his royal highness in- vited him to dinner ; and while Johnstone was making his reply, the late Mr. Lewis came near, whom he took leave to introduce to his royal highness. When Lewis had witn- drawn, some remarks were made on his talents, and John- stone said, " He has now a son going out to India ; a single word from the Prince of Wales would be the making of him. If your royal highness would condescend to favour him with a letter, it would serve him immensely." The prince looked at the actor for some moments, but made no reply. Johnstone feared he had given offence. " I beg your royal highness's pardon," said he, " I fear I have taken too great a liberty." " No, Johnstone," replied the prince, " that is not it ; but I am considering whether a letter from my brother Frederick would not be likely to serve the young gentleman more. A day or two afterward, Johnstone re- ceived, under cover from the prince, two letters — one from himself, and one from the Duke of York. This was not doing things by halves ! The prince allowed Kelly lOOZ. a-year ; or rather, insisted upon his having a/ree benefit at the Opera House annually for the remainder of his life, and on each of those occasions the king gave him lOOZ. In Liquorpond-etreet lived the once well-known Leader, the coachmaker, whom the prince patronised, and thus made him for a considerable period the most fashionable coachmaker in London ; by which means he accumulated a very handsome fortune. The prince, when in town, was frequently in the habit of going to Leader's shop, some- times driving himself in a phaeton and four, and sometimes driven by an attendant. 382 GEORGE THE FOURTH. When the late Lord Erskine was attorney-general to the Prince of Wales, he was retained by Thomas Paine to defend him on his trial for publishing the second part of his " Rights of Man ;" but it was soon intimated to him by high authority, that such advocacy was considered to be in- compatible with his official situation ; and the prince him- self, in the most friendly manner, acquainted him that it was highly displeasing to the king, and that he ought to endeavour to explain his conduct. This Mr. Erskine imme- diately did in a letter to his majesty himself, in which, after expressing his sincere attachment to his person, and to that ccnstitution which was attacked in the work to be defended, he took the liberty to claim, as an invaluable part of that very constitution, the unquestionable right of the subject to make his defence by any counsel of his own free choice, if net previously retained, or engaged by office from the crown ; and that there was no other way of deciding whether that was or was not consistent with his situation as attorney- general to the prince, than by referring, according to cus- tom, the question to the bar, which he was perfectly willing, and even desirous to do. In a few days afterward, Mr. Erskine received, through the late Admiral Payne, a most gracious message from the prince, expressing his deep re- gret in feeling himself obliged to accept Mr. Erskine's resig- nation, which was accordingly sent. A few years after- ward, however, his royal highness sent for Mr- Erskine to Carlton House, while he was still in bed under a severe ill- ness, and taking him most graciously by the hand, said to him, that though he was not at all qualified to judge of re- tainers, nor to appreciate the correctness or incorrectness of his conduct in the instance that had separated them, yet that, being convinced he had acted from the purest motives, he wished most publicly to manifest that opinion, and there- fore directed him to go immediately to Somerset House, and to bring with him for his signature the patent of chancellor to his royal highness, which he said he had always designed for M*/. Erskine. The king was particularly fond of anatomical and medical pursuits ; and Mr. Carpue, now a distinguished lecturer oa the science of anatomy in the metropolis, had the honour of APPENDIX. 383 demonstrating to his majesty, when prince, the general structure of the human body, in which he took great inte- rest. His majesty prided himself upon his medical informa- tion, and had always near him men distinguished for their successful researches in the sciences of anatomy and medi- cine. Mr. Weiss, the ingenious instrument-maker, used for many years to submit to his majesty's inspection every new surgical instrument that came out invented by himself or others ; and we have heard, that in one instance he was indebted to his majesty for the suggestion of a very valuable improvement. ORIGINAL LETTER OF THE KING, WHEN PRINCE OF WALES, TO THE LATE DUTCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE. How little you know me, ever dearest dutchess, and how much you have misconceived the object of this day's dinner, which has succeeded beyond my most sanguine expecta- tions ! It has almost, if not entirely, annihilated every coolness that has for a short time past appeared to exist between the Duke of Norfolk and his old friends, and brought Erskine back also. Ask only the Duke of Leinster and Guildford what passed. I believe you never heard such an eulogium pronounced from the lips of man, as I this day have pronounced upon Fox, and so complete a refutation of all the absurd doctrines and foolish distinctions which they have grounded their late conduct upon. This was mpst honourably, distinctly, and zealously supported by Sheridan, by which they were completely driven to the wall, and positively pledged themselves hereafter to follow no other line of politics than what Fox and myself would hold out to them, and with a certain degree of contrition expressed by them, at their ever having ventured to express a doubt respecting either Charles or myself. Harry How- ard, who never has varied in his sentiments, was overjoyed, and said he never knew any thing so well done, or so well timed, and that he should to-night retire to his bed the happiest of men, as his mind was now at ease, which it had not been for some time past. In short, what fell from both Sheridan as well as myself was received with rapture 384 GEORGE THE FOURTH. by the company ; and I consider this as one of the luckiest and most useful days I have spent. As to particulars, I muet ask your patience till to-morrow, when I will relate every incident, with which I am confident you will be most completely satisfied. Pray, my ever dearest dutchess, whenever you bestow a thought upon me, have rather a better opinion of my steadiness and firmness. I really think, without being very romantic, I may claim this of you ; at the same time I am most grateful to you for your candour, and the affectionate warmth, if I may be allowed so to call it, which dictates the contents of your letter : you may depend upon its being seen by no one but myself. Depend upon my coming to you to-morrow. I am delighted with your goodness to me, and ever Most devotedly yours, Carlton Houses Friday night. G. P On the death of the late Duke of Cumberland, George the Fourth, then Prince of Wales, was elected Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons, and in that character his royal highness presided at the subsequent anniversary dinner, consisting of the members of all the inaugurated lodges of masons in London. The meeting was held at Freemasons' Tavern, and nearly 500 persons were present. On this occasion the prince exhibited, in various speeches, powers which astonished the audience ; and while he expatiated upon the character and virtues of his recently deceased uncle and predecessor in office, many were in tears. This, we believe, was the only great public occasion in which the oratorical powers of the Prince of Wales were exhibited during three or four hours. Lord Moira occupied a place on the right hand of the prince, who appointed him Deputy Grand Master, which, by the death of the Duke of Manchester, had become vacant. George the Fourth was an accomphshed musician ; hi' majesty performed well on the violoncello, and sang wit^ great taste and judgment: his voice web a bass of fine APPENDIX. 385 quality, mixing harmoniously with other voices in glees, &c. When Mazzinghi conducted the Sunday concerts which used to take place at the residences of persons of rank some thirty or forty years ago, the Prince of Wales played the principal bass with Crosdill. The late king has left a will, which, as soon as his majesty's decease was announced, was placed in the hands of the Duke of Wellington, who handed it to the present sovereign, and it has been opened. The indivi- duals named as executors are the Duke of Wellington, the late Lord Giiford, and Sir William Knighton. The will is dated some years back. A valuable miniature likeness of Oliver Cromwell, painted from life, having been accidentally found, the possessor had the honour of showing it to the late king, who immediately exclaimed, " How would Charles I. have honoured the man who had brought him Oliver Cromwell's head !" The king's service of plate is superb : he had a very plain set in common use ; but before his last illness, when the cabinet ministers held a council at Windsor, and dined with him, the rich service was produced, and was the object of great attraction. The king had provided a sumptuous sideboard for its display, which was made of very dark and beautifully polished mahogany, inlaid with gold, and lined with looking-glass ; but when put up, it was found entirely to overpower the effect of the other furniture and decora- tions of the apartment. The obvious course to pursue would have been its removal ; instead of which, however, the magnificently decorated arch, which the lower part of the sideboard supported, was cut away, and the remainder left for use. The apartments are spacious and well-con- structed; they have, however, from the nature of tho K k 386 GEORGE THE FOURTH. building, only one principal light, and there is too much gold panelling m them for elegance. So averse was the king to he seen during his rides m the parks at Windsor for the last two or three years, that outriders were always despatched, while his pony-chaise was preparing, to whichever of the gates he intended to pass, across the Frogmore road, driving from one park into the other ; and if anybody was seen loitering near either gate, the course of the ride was instantly altered, to escape even the passing glance of a casual observer. His majesty seldom drove across to the long walk from the castle, be- cause he was there more likely to be met by the Windsor people. His most private way was through a small gate in the park wall, opposite another small gate in the wall of the grounds at Frogmore, at the Datchet side. He there crossed the road in a moment, and had rides so arranged between Frogmore and Virginia-water, that he had between twenty and thirty miles of neatly planted avenues, from which the public were wholly excluded. At certain points of these rides, which opened towards the public thorough- fares of the park, there were always servants stationed on those occasions, to prevent the intrusion of strangers upon the king's privacy. The plantations have been so carefully nourished for seclusion around the royal lodge, that only the chimneys of the building can be now seen from the space near the top of the long walk. The king, while engaged in fishing, caused the same rigid exclusion from his grotesque building at Virginia-water to be enforced ; and also when visiting the various temples which he had erected on the grounds. A great deal of money was laid out on these edifices ; but it was only by stealth and the connivance of servants that they were at any time to be seen. His majesty was so little aware that the fatal result of his indisposition was near at hand, that up to a very late period of his sufferings he occupied himself considerably with the progress of some additions which he was making to the royal lodge. He was particularly anxious to have a new dining-room finished by his birth-day, on the 12th of APPENDIX. 387 August, not thinking that a month before that day his re- mains would be gathered into their tomb. He was also up to the same late period occupied by the improvements in Windsor Castle, and used to have himself rolled through the apartments in a chair which was constructed for his majesty's use. Notwithstanding these anticipations, it is known that the king's health had been declining for nearly two years. His old sufferings from the gout had given way to an occasional " embarrassment of breathing" (the expres- sive phrase of the bulletins), and at times to great depres- sion of spirits. His majesty was often found apparently lost in abstraction, and relieved only by shedding tears. At other times, however, the king took a great interest in the works which were carrying on in the lodge and the castle of Wind- sor, particularly those which he intended for his private use, and spoke of a long enjoyment of them. It is said that for some time before Sir Henry Halford and Sir M. Tierney were last called in, his late majesty was under the domestic medical treatment of two gentlemen who were of his household. His majesty had for a long time evinced a great indisposition to exercise of any kind ; the least exertion was attended with faintness, and his ma- jesty's usual remedy was a glass of some liqueur. He had a particular kind of cherry brandy, which he thought to be of medical use when he felt these symptoms of debility, and to which he resorted up to a late period of his life. Until the bursting of the blood-vessel on the day before his death, the king did not think his case absolutely hopeless ; even then, the shght refreshment of sleep rallied his spirits a little. His majesty for many years had been scarcely ever free from some symptom which indicated the presence, more or less severe, of gout in the extremities ; but in January, during the existence of the catarrhal affection, the extremi- ties were entirely free from every sign of gout. At the latter end of February, and even in the beginning of March, his majesty was well enough to take his customary rides in an open carriage, and occasionally visited the different parts of the royal demesne in which his various improve- ments and alterations were going forward. On Monday, the 12th of April, he rode in the parks for the last time, and passed an hour in the menageriej a Dlace in which he took 388 GEORGE THE FOURTH. great delight. While there he complained of pain and faintness, and inquired of the keeper if he had any brandy in the house. The man, an old servant of the Duke of York, said he had something which he thought his majesty would like better than brandy. " What is that ?" said his majesty. " Cherry gin," was the reply ; " it was made by my old woman, sir." The king seemed much pleased by this mark of attention, and expressed a wish to taste " the old girl's cordial." On its being handed to his majesty, he appeared to relish exceedingly the (to him novel) compound, and finished the remainder of the bottle. The harassing dry cough and wheezing respiration still continued, notwithstanding the remedies that were em- ployed. It was on the 28th of the month (March) that Mr. Wardrop, on visiting the king, first called the attention of Sir W. Knighton to the existence of an alarming disease going on in his majesty's heart. From the examination of the circulating and respiratory organs, which Mr. Wardrop then made by means of the stethoscope, it was quite evi- dent that the "embarrassment" in the king's breathing arose from a disordered state of the heart's action, the blood not being propelled with its natural regularity and velocity through the lungs. The rale, or wheezing sound, was attributed to an in jected suffused state of the mucous membrane lining the air-cells, and was independent of that disturbance of the respiration produced by the irregularity in the action of the heart. The circumstance of the extremities, which had been so long affected by gout, being now entirely free from every symptom of that disease, and the well-known strongly- marked gouty constitution of his majesty, indicated the pre- cise character of the disease which existed in the cavity of the thorax, and led to the hope that, by an effort of nature, or by the aid of art, a revulsion or translation of the gout from the chest to the extremities might remove the more dangerous inflammatory affection of the vital organs. Time, however, has shown that this salutary termination of his majesty's disorder was not to be realized. Like many per- sons subject to gout, his majesty had occasionally, and taorc particularly before a paroxysm, an intermittent pulse Bod a corresponding irregularity of the heart's action. APPENDIX. 389 ROYAL AMATEURS. His late majesty inherited a musical temperament on the side of both father and mother. George III., as is well known, possessed a German taste for the organ, and was, it is said, a good performer. His queen (who had doubtless profited by one of the family of the Bachs, long a music- master at court) was a singer, had been accompanied by Mozart, and favourably mentioned as a player on the harp- sichord in the diary of Haydn. The testimony of the old composer may be relied on ; it came to light among other pri- vate memoranda years after his death, but when every thing connected with Haydn had become matter of public interest, and his opinions upon art the property of posterity. Haydn's note is, " the queen played pretty well ,*" a cautious phrase, but one more complimentary to her acquirements than the loose epithets of praise which are generally dealt out upon Hny exhibition of royal cleverness. The patronage which George HI. bestowed upon the solid style of the ancient masters, grew out of his early intimacy and admiration of the works of Handel ; and the particular favour which he testified towards this author's compositions was in part the conscientious fulfilment of a promise. Our authority for the following anecdote is good, and the circumstance is not too romantic to be true. After one of the concerts at court, at which George HI., then a child, had been an auditor, Handel patted the little boy on the head, saying, " You will take care of my music when I am dead." This pathetic injunction of the com- poser the king, to his honour, never forgot. How it may be in other arts we know not ; but in music it is seldom that the taste changes after an individual has arrived at manhood in the admiration of a certain beav. ideal. This is particu- larly the case where people have strong feeling, with little science : it is knowledge alone which, in opening to us the possible advantages of new discoveries, renders music pro- gressive. Although the great revolution in music which had been anticipated by C. P. E. Bach, and which was car- ried through by Haydn and Mozart, took place during the reign of George HI., and although the king was visited by kith the latter composers, and was partly sensible of their Kk2 390 GEORGE THE FOURTH. merits, he still preferred Handel. With his late majesty ir.usic was less a passion than with George III., but he pos- sessed refinement of taste. Though a dilettante performer on the violoncello, for which instrument he was the pupil of Crosdill, he was more celebrated for his encouragement of clever professors, than for admiration of Ids own successes, or desire to enchant the lords and ladies in waiting by the royal tours de force. A youth, son of one of the persons of his household, having manifested an inclination for mu- sic, the king despatched him to Vienna to receive the best cultivation which the care of Mozart could bestow upon his talent ; the object of this right princely patronage was Mr. Attwood. He ever manifested a particular regard for Lindley and J. B. Cramer ; and we have heard it mentioned that one of the finest exhibitions of piano-forte playing was given by the latter at the Pavilion at Brighton a few years back. So well knovni among professors was the partiality of the late king to Lindley, that he was named as the most probable successor of Shield in the mastership of the royal band of musicians. This post was, however, otherwise disposed of. The first score of the opera La Clemenza di Tito knovpn in this country was obtained from the library at Carlton House, and, as a signal favour from the prince to Mrs. Bil- lington, was lent for her benefit. How worthy that extra- ordinary woman was of the distinction she soon displayed, in presence of the admiring orchestra and vocal corps of the Opera House, by sitting down to the score, playing the whole opera through, and singing the part of Vitellia at sight ! The prince once received a letter by the twopenny post, which he is said to have kept as a curiosity. It was sent by Griesbach, the German oboe-player, with a simplicity characteristic of the man, to request payment for attendance at some private concerts. The original mode of applica- tion caused much diversion to the party addressed, and pro- cured the money instantly. Church-music his majesty did not encourage so much as might have been beneficial. If Handel had in the preceding reign found favour to the ex- clusion of other masters, and consequently to the narrow- ing of the public taste, in the succeeding one fashion hardly gave him a chance. Under the withering influence of ne- glect in the highest quarters, and suffering too from the in- APPENDIX. * 891 troduction of the modern sacred compositions of the conti ■ nent, seductive through the effects of Ught and shade, and the rich and varied employment of instnmients, Handel was fast sinking into neglect. The enthusiasm which Ger- many and France now manifest for the works of this author, the pubhc admiration which Beethoven expressed of him, and the lately published testimonies of Haydn and Mozart, have had their effect upon this country, and the ancient taste is reviving. The latest musical expense of the mo- narch was his private band of wmd instruments : this was unequalled in Europe. The performers were picked with the greatest care by Cramer, the master ; their allowance was liberal, and their united practice diligent and punctual. The person selected to preside in this department was one who not only knows the full scope and capacity of every instrument, but is an ahle harmonist, and competent to adapt a composition in its most effective manner. Not knowing whether the band exists or not under William IV., we can scarcely avoid some confusion of tenses in writing about it. We hope, however, his present majesty has too much taste to dispense with a set of performers that would be an ornament to any court in Europe. ROYAL OBSEQUIES. The royal mausoleum was built by George the Third, under Cardinal Wolsey's magnificent tomb-house, which reverted to the crown upon the disgrace of that magnificent minister. The present tenants of this gloomy mansion are George the Tliird and his Queen, the Princesses Charlotte and Amelia, and the Dukes of Kent and York, together with the infant Princes Octavius and Alfred. There are stone stands for twelve coffins in the centre of the tomb, which are reserved for sovereigns. The coffins of the other members of the royal family are deposited on shelves at each side. The entrance is in the cboir of St. George's chapel, from which a subterraneous passage leads to the tomb. The first coffin of the royal founder's family (that of his daughter Princess Amelia) was deposited here on the 4th of November, 1810 ; the last that of the Duke of "iork. 393 • GEORGE THE FOURTH. The coffin had been exhibited to the public in a room belonging to the factory, which was hung round with black. The coffin is covered on the outside with purple velvet, and lined on the inside with white satin. The nails are placed in double rows around either side, and at the head and foot, and the sides are divided into three compart- ments by double rows of nails. A scroll frame is placed in each of these compartments ; and at the ends, and within the frame, is a handle highly burnished and gilt. The comer plates in the compartments have a coronet engraved on them, surrounded with chased palm branches, and the engraved letters, G. IV. R. The lid of the coffin is simi- larly lined and ornamented with nails, and divided into three compartments. In the centre is fired the plate of inscription. At the head are the royal arois, and at the foot is a shield, supported by a lion, and surrounded with a wreath of laurel. The plate, ornaments, handles, and nails are composed of metal richly gilt. The following is the inscription issued from the College of Arms, to be engraved on the silver plate which is sol- dered on the leaden coffin, and also on the plate which is to be placed on the state coffin : — DEPOSITUM SERENISSIMI POTENTISSIMI ET EXCELLENTISSIMI MONARCHY GEORGII QUART! DEI GRATIA BRITANNIARUM REGIS FIDEI DEFENSORIS REGIS HANOVER^ AC BRUNSVICI, ET LUNEBURGI- DVCIS OBIIT XXVI. DIE JUNII ANNO DOMINI MDCCCXXX. ^TATIS SU^ LXVIII. REGNIQUE SUI XI. The state coffin is larger than any that are usually made, measuring across the shoulders three feet one inch and a half. The plate on which the " depositum" is engraved is of a size proportionate to that of the coffin ; it is nineteen APPENDIX. 393 inches and a half in length, seventeen inches and a half in width at the top, and fourteen inches and a quarter at thai bottom. After the king's funeral, the Duke of Cumberland re- mained behind ; and, when the chapel was entirely cleared, his royal highness, attended by the deputy surveyor-general, and a few workmen, descended into the royal vault. He passed firom coffin to coffin, until he came to that which encloses the remains of the late Duke of York ; when, sud- denly turning to the deputy surveyor-general, he said, " Matthews, my poor brother York's coffin seems much more mildewed than any of its predecessors !" The velvet covering of the Duke of York's coffin is much discoloured ; while those of George III. and his Queen, the Princess Charlotte, the Duke of Kent, and even that of the Princess Amelia, remain as fresh in appearance as when first placed within the sepulchre. Mr. Matthews explained, that, in all probability, the discoloration of the velvet was the con- sequence of the wood of which the coffin was formed not having been so well seasoned as the others. His royal highness made no farther comment ; but, laying his hand on the coffin of his late majesty, and pondering on the in- scription for a moment or two, he ascended from the vault, and returned to his apartments in the Castle. The churches throughout the metropolis were hung with black cloth, on account of the death of his majesty. The name of " our most gracious sovereign William" Was sub- stituted for that of " George" in the church service. The latter name has been used since the accession of Georgre I. in 1714. The name of Adelaide is not new in the list of Queens of England. The second wife of Henry I. was Adelaide, a princess of Louvain. The mother of King Stephen, daughter of William the Conqueror, was Adela, which is in fact, the same name. 394 GEORGE THE FOURTH. Copy of the Letter addressed to the Managers of the different Theatres and Vauxhall Gardens, " Lord Chamberlain's Office, June 26, 1830. " Sir, — In consequence of the death of our late most gracious sovereign, I am commanded by the lord chamber- lain to desire that the theatre under your management be immediately closed, and continue so till after the funeral. " I am, sir, your obedient servant, "J. B. Mash." At a late hour the following was issued : " Lord Chamberlain's Office, June 26, 1830. " Sir, — I am authorized by the lord chamberlain to ac- quaint you, that the king, taking into his beneficent consi- deration the very great distress which the shutting up of the theatres for any length of time would occasion to nu- merous families, his majesty has been graciously pleased to command that the closing of the theatre under your management, on accoiuit of the melancholy event of the demise of our late most gracious sovereign, shall be confined to this evening, the two days of the body lying in state, and the day of the funeral, of which due notice will be given you. " Your obedient servant, "J. B. Mash.'» LIVING HEIRS TO HIS LATE MAJESTY. Class I. — 1 . William Henry, the present king. 2. Alex andrina Victoria, of Kent. 3. Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland. 4. George Fred. Alex. Ch. Ern. Aug., of Cumberland. 5. Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex. 6. Adolphus Frederick, Duke of Cambridge. 7. George "William, of Cambridge. 8. Augustus Caroline, of Cam- bridge. 9. Augusta Sophia, of England. 10. Elizabeth, Landgr. of Hesse Homburg. 11. Mary, Dutchess of Gloucester. 12. Sophia, of England. Class IL — 13. William Frederick, Duke of Gloucestciv APPENDIX. 395 1^. Sophia Matilda, of Gloucester. 15. Charles Fr. Aug. Wwi., Duke of Brunswick. 16. William, of Brunswick. 17. Augustus, of Bruntiwick. 18. Frederick William, King of Wirtemberg. 19. Chas. Fred. Alex., Prince Royal of Wirtemberg. 20. Maria Freda. Chara., of Wir- temberg. 21. Sophia Freda. Matilda. 22. Catherine. 23. Paul. 24. Frederic Charles. 25. Frederic Augustus. 26. Frederica. 27. Paulina, wife of Grand Duke Michael of Russia. 28. Frederica Catherine, wife of Jerome Buo- naparte. 29. Jerome Napoleon. 30. Frederick VI., King of Denmark. After the present royal family of Denmark, come in suc- cession Class III. — The family of the King of the Nether- lands. The family of the Elector of Hesse Cassel. The numerous descendants of Louisa of England, Queen of Denmark,* grandmother of Frederick IV., and the present Dutchess of Holstein, and also of the dethroned King of Sweden (Gustavus Adolphus), of the Elector of Hesse Cassel, &c. ; so that the family of the last-named claim from Louisa of England, Queen of Denmark, as well as from her sister Mary, Landgravine of Hesse Cassel. Class IV. — The very numerous descendants of Sophia of England, Queen of Prussia, mother of Frederick the Great, &c. ; who was great-grandmother to the present King of Prussia, the late Dutchess of York, the present King and Queen of the Netherlands, &c. She was also grandmother to Charles XIII. of Sweden, to Princess Rad- zivil, to Sophia, Abbess of Quedlenberg, &c. * That is to say, the descendants of the Electress Sophia (Dutchess Dowager of Hanover, daughter of the Princess Elizabeth, Queen of Bo- hemia, who was daughter of James the First), whom the act of settle- inent (I3th William III. 1701) declared *' next in succession to the crown of England, in the ProtestarU lint " S96 GEORGE THE FOTTRTH. NOTICES OF THEIR PRESENT MAJESTIES. HIS MAJESTY KING WILLIAM THE FOURTH. William the Fourth, third son of King George the Third, was bom August the 21st, 1765, and was baptized by the name of William Henry. At an early age he was destined by his royal father for the naval service of his country. At fourteen he was entered as midshipman on board the Prince George, of ninety-eight guns, recently built, and called after the Prince of Wales, his late majesty, commanded by Ad- miral Digby, In this ship he served in the engagement between the Engli^ fleet, under the command of Admiral Rodney, and the Spanish fleet, commanded by Admiral Doia Juan de Langara, when the Enghsh gained a complete vic- tory, the Spaniards, however, fighting very bravely. The AdJtniral in his despatches mentioned, that " he had called a captured Spanish man-of-war the Prince William, in con- sequence of her having the honour to be taken in presence of his royal highness !" WTiile serving in the Prince George, his royal highness was also present at the capture of a French man-of-war and three smaller vessels. The following instance of his royal highness's humanity will do him more honour with reflecting minds than the mere accident of birth can ever bestow : — It is described by a midshipman in a letter to his family, dated " Port Royal Harbour, April, 1783. The last time Lord Hood's fleet was here, a court-martial was held on Mr. Benjamin Lee, midshipman, for disrespect to a superior ofl[icer, at which Lord Hood sat as president. The deter- mination of the court was fatal to the prisoner, and he was condemned to death. Deeply affected as the whole body of midshipmen were at the dreadful sentence, they knew not how to obtain a mitigation of it, since Mr. Lee was ordered for execution ; while they had not time to make an appeal to the Admiralty, and despaired of a petition to Ad- miral Rowley. However, his royal highness generously stepped forth, drew up a petition, to which he was the first to set his name, and solicited the rest of the midshipmen in port to follow his example. He then hiirrself carried the APPENDIX. 397 petition to Admiral Rowley, and, in the most pressing and argent manner, begged the life of an unhappy brother, in which he succeeded, and Mr. Lee is reprieved. We all acknowledge our warmest and grateful thanks to our hu- mane, our brave, and worthy prince, who has so nobly exerted himself in preserving the life of his brother sailor.'* The war ceased in 1782, before the prince's service as a midshipman was completed. He, however, was determined to quahfy himself for command, and continued in active service; and, in 1783, visited Cape rran9ois and the Ha- vana. Another opportunity was here afforded him of exercising His humanity for the deliverance of the unfortunate. Some of his countrymen, having broken the fidelity they had pro- mised to the Spanish government, were in danger of suffer- ing under a sentence of death. His royal highness inter- ceded with effect — they were pardoned and liberated. The following letter, written by his royal highness to Don Gal- vez, the governor of Louisiana, does honour to his talents and the goodness of his heart : " Sir, — I want words to express to your excellency my just sense of your polite letter, of the delicate manner in which you caused it to be delivered, and your generous conduct towards the unfortunate in your power. Their pardon, which you have been pleased to grant on my ac- count, is the most agreeable present you could have offered me, and is strongly characteristic of the bravery and gal- lantry of the Spanish nation. This instance increases, if possible, my opinion of your excellency's humanity, which has appeared on so many occasions in the course of the late war. Admiral Rowley is to despatch a vessel to Louis- iana for the prisoners. I am convinced they will ever think of your excellency's clemency with gratitude ; and I have sent a copy of your letter to the king, my father, who will be fiilly sensible of your excellency's attention to me. I request my compliments to Madame Galvez, and that you will be assured, that actions so noble as those of your ex- cellency will ever be remembered by yours sincerely, « William P." His royal highness, having served his full time as mid- shipman, was promoted in due course to the rank of lieu- tenant and captain, and commanded for a considerable time LI 398 GEORGE THE FOURTH. the Pegasus frigate, and in 1790 was appointed rear-admi- ral of the blue. On the 20th of May, 1789, his royal high- ness was created Duke of Clarence and St. Andrew's, and Earl of Munster ; and on the breaking out of the war with France, took a prominent part in the debates in the House of Lords in support of the war. As his royal brother, the Duke of York, was among the first that left our shores to face the enemy on the continent, some surprise was excited that the Duke of Clarence was not given a command in the navy. The cause is still un- known to the public ; probably it remained a secret in the breast of liis royal father. That he was from the com- mencement of the war desirous of service has never been doubted. He made repeated and earnest applications to the king to be allowed to hoist his flag, and reUeve Lord Collingwood, then in a declining state of health, in the command of the Mediterranean fleet. About the same pe- riod, a letter, addressed by the duke to Commodore Owen, appeared in the public papers, which thus describes his so- licitude to share the dangers of war and the glories of vic- tory : — " When I shall have the honour to hoist my flag I cannot be certain ; but I am very much inclined to think, that eventually I shall have the honour and happiness of commanding those fine fellows whom I saw in the spring, in the Dowtis and at Portsmouth. My short stay at Ad- miral Campbell's had impressed me with very favourable ideas of the improved state of the navy ; but my residence at Portsmouth has afforded me ample opportunity of exa- mining, and consequently of having a perfect judgment of the high and correct discipline now established in the king's service." " Nothing is wanting, sir," said Nelson to Prince Wil- liam Henry, in 1787, in one of his epistles, "to make you the darling of the English nation, but truth. Sorry I am to say, much to the contrary has been dispersed. More able friends than myself your royal highness may easily fijid, and of more consequence in the state ; but one more attached and affectionate is not so easily met with. Princes seldom, very seldom find a disinterested person to communicate to. I do not pretend to be that person ; but of this be assured, by a man who, I trust, never did a dis- honourable act, that I am interested only that your royal APPENDIX. 399 highness should be the greatest and best man this country ever produced." When Nelson married Mrs. Nisbett in March, 1787, in the West Indies, the Duke of Clarence, then Prince Wil- liam Henry, who had gone out to the West Indies the pre- ceding winter, was present by his own desire to give away the bride. On the 11th of July, 1818, his majesty married the Prin- cess Adelaide Louisa Theresa (born August 13, 1792). His majesty next received his appointment to the office of lord high admiral, an office long thought to be too great to be intrusted to any individual, and accordingly executed by commissioners since the death of Prince George of Den- mark, husband of Queen Anne. On the appointment of Mr. Canning to the dignity of prime minister, several of his colleagues had resigned, most of them on the alleged ground of his being a supporter of Catholic emancipation, which had been opposed by Lord Liverpool. Lord Melville, the first lord of the Admiralty, though a supporter of the Catholic claims, thought fit to re- sign also. The object of the resignations evidently was to drive Mr. Canning from the helm ; but to enable him to counteract that object, the resignation of the first lord of the Admiralty was most opportune, though certainly the con- sequence was unforeseen by the party. Mr. C aiming boldly revived the office of lord high admiral in the person of the next heir to the crown, his present majesty ; and by that prompt and unlooked-for exercise of the royal preroga- tive, at once confounded the seceders, and greatly strength- ened his administration. The manner in which his royal highness executed the du- ties during the short period he filled the office will never be forgotten by the navy. He visited every naval depot ; conversed on friendly terms, not only with every com- mander, but with every officer ; and made promotions with- out regard to any thing but merit and service, wholly disre- garding parliamentary influence. The lord high admiral was accessible to every naval officer, without even the ce- lemony of full dress ; and if every wish could not be grati- fied, at least every one was satisfied that his royal highness was anxious to render him service. The lord high admira^ also exercised a princely hospitaUty. With such qualities 400 GEORGE THE FOURTH. it was impossible that he should not be beloved. Mr. Can- ning had, however, ceased to rule or to live. The Duke of Wellington became his successor, and it was soon per- ceived that he was desirous to have Lord Melville restored to the office. The popularity his royal highness acquired during his performance of the duties of cnief of the navy may fairly be considered a presage of the manner in which he may be expected to discharge the higher duties of sove- reign of a great and loyal people. The annual parliamentary allowance to his present ma- jesty, as heir presumptive, amounted to 32,500Z., being 17,500Z. per annum less than the income of Prince Leopold, who receives 50,000Z. The Duke of Cumberland has 25,000Z. per annum ; the Duke of Cambridge 27,000Z. ; the Duke of Sussex 21,000Z. ; the Princesses Sophia and Augusta 13,000Z. each ; the Dutchess of Kent 12,000Z. ; the Duke of Gloucester, 14,000Z. Independently of the income enjoyed by his present ma- jesty, the queen was in the receipt of 6,000Z. per annum ; which was settled upon her on her marriage in 1818. THE QUEEN; Her majesty, the queen consort of these realms, is tne daughter of George Frederick Charles, Duke of Saxe-Co- burg Meinengen, by Louisa Elenora, a daughter of Chris- tian Alber Lewis, prince of Hohenloe-Lat genburg. Her majesty was bom on the 13th of August, 1792, and was baptized by the name of Adelaide Louisa Theresa Caroline Amelia. In 1803 her majesty lost her excellent father, who died at the early age of 42 ; and with her only brother, the present Duke of Saxe Meinengen, and her sister, Ida, Dutchess of Saxe Weimar Eisenach, was left under the guardianship of her mother, the dutchess ; who, by her husband's last will, was left regent of the dutchy and guar- dian of his children. Under this able and amiable woman the children were educated in great retirement at Meinen- APPENDIX. 401 gen, the capital of the small principality, and with a care and attention to their morals and improvement in every branch of polite learning that does the highest credit to her virtues and character. This excellent princess is still alive, and last year spent several weeks with her daughter in JEngland. From earliest childhood the queen was remark- able for her sedate and rather reserved habits. Her whole time was devoted to her studies ; and though naturally of a cheerful and lively disposition among her more intimate associates, she took little or no pleasure in the gayeties or frivolities of fashion ; and even when arrived at more ma- ture years, she showed an utter detestation for that laxity of morals and contempt for religious feeling which had sprung out of the revolution in France, and had found their way into almost every petty court in Germany. I The court of Meinengen happily did not attract much of the notice of the emperor of the French. It was' not thought necessary either to attempt its corruption by his profligate emissaries, or to crush its existence by the arm of power ; consequently the widowed regent was left in undisturbed possession of her authority, and permitted to educate her children and regulate her dutchy according to her own views and wishes, while almost every other state in Germany became a focus of atheism and immorality in con- sequence of that laxity of principle which France had in- troduced among them. The little court at Meinengen was therefore remarkable for its strict morality, and steady sup- port of the Protestant faith ; and its princesses became celebrated for their amiable and estimable conduct. Their chief dehght was in establishing and superintending schools for the education of the lower classes of the community, and in procuring and providing food and raiment for the feeble and destitute in the city and suburbs of the ducal residence. The Princess Adelaide was the life of every institution which had for its object the well-being of her fellow-crea- tures. Our late Queen Charlotte had long observed this family, which, flourishing like an oasis in the great desert of cor- rupted Germany, had attracted much of her regard ; and when her foresight judged it prudent to urge her third son, the Duke of Clarence, to enter into the wedded state, she strongly pressed upon his attention the only remaining L 1 3 402 GEORGE THE FOURTH. daughter of the house of Meinengen. The youngest sister, Ida, had already been raarried to her cousin Bernard, the se- cond son of the Grand Duke of Saxe Weimar. Accord- ingly, a regular demand was made of the princess's hand in marriage, and a favourable answer returned. As it was'im- possible for his royal highness to proceed to Germany, the princess, with her mother, was invited over to England, and on the 11th of July, 1818, the prince and princess were married at Kew, in the presence of the queen and other members of the royal family ; and at the same time the marriage of the Duke and Dutchess of Kent, which had previously taken place in Germany, was performed accord- ing to the rites of the church of England. After the ceremony, the Duke and Dutchess of Clarence spent a few days in retirement at St. James's Palace, and then proceeded, with a numerous suite, to Hanover. In the capital of that kingdom they spent the winter of 1818 and spring of 1819. The most happy anticipations were formed of her giving birth to an heir to the crown of England. In the month of March, however, her royal highness caught a severe cold, which ended in a violent pleuritic attack, and, in consequence of the treatment necessary to preserve her valuable life, premature labour was induced, and in the se- venth month her royal highness was delivered of a princess. It was christened on the day of its birth by the name of Elizabeth Adelaide, but expired soon afterward, and was in- terred in the royal vault at Hanover, where lie the remains of the great Elector, Ernest Augustus, and his grandson, George II. The dutchess's recovery was slow, and a change of air being thought requisite, she proceeded, as soon as she was able to travel, to her natal soil, visiting (»ottingen and Hesse Philipsthall, on the way to Meinengen. The joy of the good people of Saxony on again beholding their princess knew no bounds : they knew how dangerously ill she had been, how almost miraculous had been her recovery ; and from the moment she entered the precincts of the dutchy, she was met and welcomed by tiie vassals of her brother, and carried in triumph, for a distance of nearly thirty miles, to the capital, when fete succeeded fete, and all the world kept holyday for nearly a month. The royal duke, too, by his kind and condescending manners, and devoted atten- APPENDIX. 40^ tion to his fair spouse, soon won the hearts of the unso- phisticated natives, and became as one of their native princes. After a residence of six weeks in the castle, the court moved to Lubenstein, a residence retired, and of singular beauty, where there are celebrated mineral springs, and where, in the course of the smnmer, the dutchess recovered her health perfectly. The duke, whose heart was always in England, determined on returning to Bushy ; and the dutchess, who had been charmed with the beauties of that retirement during her short stay in this country, strongly urged his doing so, maintaining that they might live as economically at Bushy Park as at any other place in the world. Towards the end of October, 1819, the royal pair left Meinengen, on their return to England. The fatigue of so long a journey was too much for her delicate frame, and at Dunkirk she suiFered a miscarriage. This again affected her health ; and a residence on the seacoast being reckoned advisable. Lord Liverpool offered the duke the use of Dover Castle ; and on landing from the Royal Sovereign yacht, the Duke and Dutchess of Clarence took up their residence in that ancient building, where they remained nearly six weeks. The dutchess being now perfectly recovered, they re- moved to St. James's (Bushy House being under repairs), and spent the winter of that year in London. Again there seemed a fair prospect of her giving birth to a child at the full time. Considerably before the natural period, however, her royal highness was delivered of a fine healthy princess. The child, nevertheless, grew, and increased in strength daily, to the great joy of its illustrious parents, and of the nation at large. By special desire of the late king she was christened Elizabeth — a name dear to Englishmen ; but when about three months old, she was seized with a fatal illness which carried her off in a few hours. PROCLAMATION OF HIS MAJESTY. Monday, June 28, being appointed for the proclamation of his Majesty, William IV., the heralds and other persons 404 GEORGE THE FOURTH. whose duty it was to officiate on the occasion, assembled at an early hour at St. James's Palace. In the course of the morning the court of the royal resi- dence became crowded with carriages of the nobility and ministers of state, and the adjoining streets were filled with spectators. The weather was extremely favourable, and a prodigious mult-.tude thronged the streets through which the caval- cade was expected to pass. It is seldom that such an im- mense mass of people is seen collected together. Shortly before ten o'clock his Majesty arrived at the pa- lace from Bushy Park. The king was attired in deep mourning, and wore a blue sash over his left shoulder. His Majesty was received by the Dukes of Cumberland, Sussex, and Gloucester, Prince Leopold, the Duke of Welling- ton, &c. Every avenue and situation in the neighbourhood of the palace was crowded with individuals desirous of witnessing the approaching ceremony. Seldom or never has so vast a concourse been congregated in the Park and inunediat vicinity of St. James's. Precisely at ten o'clock the Park and Tower guns having been fired by signal, Sir George Nayler, Garter King-at- Arms, read the Proclamation, aimouncing the accession of his Majesty. During this ceremony, his Majesty, surrounded by his illustrious relatives, and aU the great officers of state, pre- sented himself to the view of his subjects at the palace win- dow. As soon as he was recognised, the air was rent with acclamations. The king appeared greatly affected by this spontaneous and unanimous burst of enthusiastic loyalty and attachment, and acknowledged the attentions of his people by repeatedly bowing. Those who were fortunate enough to secure a position near the palace observed that the kmg was affected even to tears. The gates of the palace having been thrown open, the procession moved forward, the Life Guards, who accompa- nied it, brandishing their swords, and the ladies in the balco- nies and windows of the houses contiguous waving their handkerchiefs, amid a tempest of cheers from the multitude, who took off their hats and shouted " Long live King Wil- liam IV. I" APPENDIX. 405 At ten o'clock the procession began, amid the roar of the Park guns, and the scarcely less noisy acclamations of the multitude. On its arrival at Charing-cross, the procession moved in the foUovd^ing order : — Mr. Lee, High Constable of Westminster, with a number of Officers to clear the way. Two Horse Guards. A single ditto. The Farrier of the Horse Guards. Four Pioneers with their axes. The Beadles of St. James's and St. Martin's Parishes in their full dresses, and with their staves of office. A posse of New Police Constables. The Band of Horse Guards in their State uniforms. Eight Marshals on foot. The Knight Marshal and his Men. The Household Troop. State Band, Kettle-drums, and Trumpets. Pursuivants on horseback. Heralds. The King-at-arms, supported by Sergeants with their maces. Troop of Horse Guards. It is difficult to conceive anything more imposing than the appearance of Charing-cross and its immediate vicinity on the approach of the procession. The streets were lined with spectators in thousands, coaches and vehicles of every description thronged the way, and the houses from basement to roof were crowded with persons anxious to witness and offer the tribute of their cheer to the passing pageant. The ringing of the church bells, the discharge of ordnance, and the shouts of the multitude, added greatly to the ex- citement of the occasion. From the opera house to Cha- ring-cross every position that afforded the chance of a view of the cavalcade was occupied by clusters of human beings ; and the whole scene presented an extremely animated ap- pearance, the gay dresses of the females not having been as yet superseded by the sombre garb of mourning. The procession having halted, the following proclamation was read : — 406 GEORGE THE FOURTH. " Whereas, it hath pleased Ahnighty God to call to his mercy our late Sovereign Lord King George the Fourth, of blessed memory, by whose decease the imperial crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is solely and rightfully come to the high and mighty Prince William, Duke of Clarence ; we, therefore, the lords spiritual and temporal of this realm, being here assisted with those of his late majesty's privy council, with numbers of other principal gentlemen of quality, with the lord mayor, alder- men, and citizens of London, do now hereby, with one voice and consent of tongue and heart, publish and pro- claim that the high and mighty Prince William, Duke of Clarence, is now, by the death of the late sovereign, of happy memory, become our only la,wful and rightful liege Lord William the Fourth, by the grace of God, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith (and so forth). To whom we acknowledge all faith and constant obedience, with all humble and hearty affection, beseeching God, by whom kings and queens do reign, to bless the royal prince, WUliam the Fourth, with long and happy years to reign over us. " Given, &c. • God save the King !" At the conclusion, the air was rent by cries of " Long live King Wiliiam!" and hats and handkerchiefs were Waved in a manner the most loyal and enthusiastic. The procession then moved slowly along the Strand to- wards Temple-bar, the gates of which were closed accord- ing to custom. On a herald demanding admission in the name of King William IV., the, gates were opened by the city marshal, who conducted the herald where the lord mayor, attended by the sheriffs, and other municipal au- thorities, awaited in their carriages the approach of the ca- valcade. At the end of Chancery-lane the proclamation was again repeated, and the dwellers east of Temple-bar afforded satisfactory evidence that their lungs and loyalty were as strong as those of the inhabitants of the court-end of the metropolis. At Wood-street, Cheapside, the proclamation was also read, and again, at the Royal Exchange, under circumstances precisely similar to those already described. The last pro- clamation took place at Aldgate. At the conclusion of APPENDIX. 407 each proclamation, " God save the King !" was played by the state band, and the assemblage displayed the utmost enthusiasm. ^ Throughout the whole of the line of road, the windows and tops of the houses were filled with spectators : every spot that commanded a bird's-eye view of the procession was crowded, and the streets presented an immense mass of hving loyalty. The procession was splendid without being gorgeous or extravagant. The assemblage attracted by it was immense, the Strand, from Charing-cross to Temple-bar, presenting the appearance of a sea of heads ; and we may say, that few public ceremonies within the memory of the present generation, have been received with more distin- guished marks of enthusiasm and mterest. Mrs. Chapone, who was niece of Dr. Thomas, Bishop of Winchester, formerly preceptor to George III., and used to spend much of her time at her uncle's residence at Farn- ham Castle, relates the following anecdote of the young Duke of Clarence : — " I was pleased with all the princes, but particularly with Prince William, who is little of his age, but so sensible and engaging that he won the bishop's heart ; to whom he particularly attached himself, and would stay with him while all the rest ran about the house. His conversation was surprisingly manly and clever for his age ; yet with the young Bullers he was quite the boy ; and said to John Buller, by way of encouraging him to talk, ' Come, we are both boys, you know.' All of them showed affec- tionate respect to the bishop." u DOMESTIC HABITS OF KING WILLIAM IV. There are few more regular or temperate men in their habits than the present king. He rises early, sometimes at six o'clock, and after having written for some time, takes breakfast. His Majesty then hears a report read to him of the various claims on his benevolence, and sometimes visits personally the objects of his bounty who reside in the 408 GEORGE THE FOURTH. neighbourhood of his residence. At dinner he seldom eats of any made dish, but restricts himself generally to one dish of plain boiled or roasted meat, drinking only sherry, and that in moderation — never exceeding a pint. During the day, when not engaged in business, he amuses himself in cheerful conversation with men of all parties, and retires to bed early. His Majesty is constitutionally subject to asthma; but with such habits we must hope that he will live to a good old age. It is a curious fact, but one not more strange ihan true, that his present majesty is at one and the same time King Wilham the First, Second, Third, and Fourth ! The fol- lowing explanation will reconcile this apparent contradic- tion : — ^As King of Hanover he is William the First ; that country giving only the title of elector to its rulers previously to George the Third. As King of Ireland, William the Second ; that kingdom was not added to the British crown until the reign of Henry the Second, and consequently William the Conqueror and William Rufus were not sove- reigns of Ireland ; therefore, as there were no native kings of that name, William the Third of England was the First of Ireland, and our present monarch is, of course, William the Second. As King of Scotland, William the Tliird ; the only monarch of that name previously to James the First (who united the two kingdoms) being the celebrated Wilham the Lion. And as King of England, William the Fourth. THE NEW VERSION OF " GOD SAVE THE KING," BY ME. ARNOLD. God save our noble king ! William the Fourth we sing • God save the king ! Send him victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign over us ! God save the king ! APPENDIX. 409 O Lord our God, arise, Guard him from enemies, Or make them fall ; May peace, wifh plenty erown'd. Throughout his realms abound ; So be his name renown'd ! God save us all ! Or should some foreign band Dare to this favour'd land Discord to bring, May our brave William's name, '' Proud in the lists of fame, Bring them to scorn and shams God save the king ! Thy choicest gifts in store On William deign, to pour, Joy round him fling ; May he defend our laws, And ever give us cause To sing with heart and voice, God save the king ! PRIVATE HABITS, CHARACTER, AND AGE OF THE AEIGNINO SOVEREIGNS. Charles X. of France, was the oldest sovereign in Europe. He is seventy-three years of age, tall in person, and very hale. The Pope, Pius VIII., is sixty-eight, about the same age as his late majesty, and in tolerable vigour. The church is usually considered favourable to longevity. Bemadotte, king of Sweden, is sixty-six, and has recently had a severe illness, but is a strong and healthy man. William IV. of England, our sovereign, is sixty-five. He is at present in good health, and does not appear to be more than fifty. His temperate habits and practice of early rising are well known. He loves exercise, travel, and so- ciety. M m 410 GEORGE THE FOURTH. Felix, king of Sardinia, is of the same age as our monarch, and enjoys good health. Frederick VI. of Denmark, sixty-two years old, is a very healthy man. Frederick William III., king of Prussia, in his sixtieth year, possesses a good share of health, and bids fair to hve to an old age. The king of the Netherlands, William I., is fifty-eight ; he has the appearance of a weather-beaten soldier, as he is ; and, although subject to chronic complaints, is robust. Louis Philippe the First, king of the French, born in 17V3, a man of intelligence and amiable character ; elected by the Chamber of Deputies, on the abdication of Charles the Tenth, August, 1830. Francis, emperor of Austria, is fifty-two, and healthy. His affabihty and condescension in listening to the complaints of the meanest of his subj ects, and redressing their grievances, have rendered him popular. Francis, king of Naples, is fifty-two, and gouty. His character is the reverse of that of his namesake of Austria. Mahmoud II., sultan of Turkey, is forty-six, and pos- sessed of great vigour of body and mind. The Turks, how- ever, grow old prematurely, and Mahmoud may be therefore reckoned as sixty years old at the least. His countenance and his eye are particularly striking and impressive, and he is naturally a very superior man. Ferdinand VII. of Spain, is forty-five years old, and has long been a prey to disease. He has the gout constantly. Louis, king of Bavaria, is in his forty -fifth year : he has suffered from indulgence, and has but lately recovered from a long illness. His merits as a sovereign and as a man of letters are acknowledged. He passed many years in study, and his mind is of an enlarged and liberal cast. The pub- lication of a volume of poems has recently obtained him fame as an author, in addition to that derived from the wisdom of his government. Nicholas I., emperor of Russia,, is thirty-four, tall, hand- some, and accomplished, hardy and active, and accustomed to laborious exertion. A few months since he had a very dangerous illness, from which he is now recovered. He ia considered as a very ambitious monarch, and the enlargement of territory appears to be his ruling passion. APPENDIX. 411 The youngest and only female sovereign is Donna Ma- ria da Gloria, the legitimate queen of Portugal (Don Miguel not having been yet recognised), v^'ho is in her thirteenth year. She promises to be beautiful, but her health is de- licate, and she is so lame as to be obliged to use crutches. She is now at Rio Janeiro, with her father, the emperor of Brazil. THE END. NOTES BY THE AMERICAN PUBLISHERS. Note I.— Page 30. " America's bold step." — No doubt the Declaration of Independence appeared like a " bold step" to those who had thought to annihilate the colonies with a look, or terrify them into submission by proud menaces and empty boastings. In the language of an enlightened writer, " it was a fortunate circumstance for the American colonies, that the parliament of Great Britain received its impressions of their character from the por- traits drawn of them by Generals Grant, Burgoyne, and other exquisite painters of the house, by whose representations the Americans appeared too contemptible for the formation of any serious plan of military opera- tions. Five regiments were thought an ample force to drive the Ameri- cans from Massachusetts to Georgia ! But the God of battles leans not to the side of the boaster." Note 11.— Page 33. " Tke ignorance of generals." — It may be some relief to the wounded pride of English historians to attribute their national disasters to tlw> incapacity of officers, as they seem determined to accede nothing to the skill, intelligence, and prowess of their opponents ; and, least of all, to the justice of their opponents' cause. This is illiberal ; but being an illiberality to which Americans are much accustomed from this quarter, it is only calculated to excite a smile. With respect to the British gene- rals who were sent across the Atlantic to coerce the American colonies into obedience, it is not only the height of injustice, but also of ingrati- tude. All that the ablest officers could have done, under the same cir- cumstances, they did. But the sword of truth and justice was drawn against them, and who can successfully contend with Heaven 1 Why pronounce them ignorant? What Enghshman, Carleton excepted, was there, at this period, better informed in the science of war, than those alluded to ? But, like the rest of their countrymen — like the self-con- ceited ministry themselves, they knew little or nothing of America, as to her physical and moral resources. If the charge of ignorance be due any where, it is to North and his coadjutors that it should be attributed. It was their ignorance and folly that dismembered the British empire, perhaps much sooner than it would otherwise have happened. It is true that Sir Henry Clinton was deficient in energy and foresight; and had Sir Guy Carleton or Lord Cornwallis filled his station as commander-in- chief, there is no doubt that America would have met with more difficul- ties in her struggle for national existence. But the final result must have been the same. America might have been overrun and ievastated ; but she never could have been conquered and enslaved. NOTES. 413 Note III.— Page 39. " France wresting America from England." — If France wrested Ame- rica from England.then the United States '' are, and of right ought to he," French colonies. But such was not the fact. America wrested herself from England, in 1776, by her Declaration of Independence, which she asserted and maintained alone, sustaining the unequal conflict single- handed for nearly three years, as the treaty with France was not exe- cuted until 1778, and the war actually conunenced in April, 1775. Note lY.— Page 273. " TTie oppression was retracted." — How and when was the oppression retracted] and what were the colonies offered? It is true that the stamp act was repealed ; hut its repeal was accompanied by a declara- tory act still more offensive, inasmuch as it asserted " the power and right of Great Britain to bind the colonies in all cases whatever." Locke says, that " no man has a right to that which another has the right to take from him." Note Y.— Pages 79, 234, 274, 300, and 341, '\A/ortunate result for England." — The most appropriate comment which can be made on this and similar passages has already been done to our hands in the well-known and oft-quoted fable of the " Fox and the Grapes." Otherwise, the prodigal waste of human lives and public treasure on the part of Great Britain may be compared to -Ocean into tempest toss'd, To waft a feather, or to drown a fly ! Note Yl.~Page 340. ** A IJoar of frigates.^' — If the late contest between the President, and Great Britain was merely " a war of frigates," as the author has been pleased to term it, he ought to have had the candour to inform his readers which party gained the victory. He does indeed admit that "America took some of the British cruisers," which happened to be " ill-manned and ill-provided ;" but this mode of expression is too indefi- nite to give satisfaction to either party. In this " war of frigates," America lost two only, viz. the United States and the Chesapeake. The former was captured by a British squadron, the latter by the Shannon, a frigate of superior force. In order to balance the account, let us now cast up the items on the opposite page of the leger. " August 13, 1812, the United States' frigate Essex, Captain Porter, cap- tured the British sloop of war Alert, in eight minutes, without the loss of a man. Six days after the foregoing, the United States' frigate Consti- tution, Capt. Hull, captured the British frigate Guerriere in thirty min- utes. October 18th, the United States' sloop of war Wasp, of 18 guns, Capt. Jones, captured the British sloop of war Frolic, of 22 guns, in forty- three minutes. On the 25th of the same month, the American frigate United States, Com. Decatur, captured the British frigate Macedonian, after an obstinate action, and brought her into the port of New- York. December 29th, the United States' frigate Constitution, Capt. Bainbridge 414 NOTES. captured and btrmed the British frigate Java, of equal force. February 24th, 1813, the United States' sloop of war Hornet, of 16 guns, Capt, Law- rence, captured the British brig Peacock, of 18 guns, in fifteen minutes. September 5th, tlie United States' brig Enterprise of *14 guns, Capt. Bur- rows, captured the British brig of war Boxer, of 18 guns, in forty min- utes. Five days after the foregoing, the whole British squadron on Lake Erie surreudered to one of inferior force, commanded by Com. Perry. September 16th, the American privateer schooner Saratoga, of ten guns, captured tV^ British brig of war Morgiaua, of 18 guns. April 29th, 1814, the United States' sloop of war Peacock, of .20 guns, Capt. Warrington, captured t»^ British brig Epervier, of 18 guns, in forty-two minutes. June 28th, the United States' sloop of war Wasp, Capt. Blakely, captured, in nineteen minutes, the British sloop of war Reindeer. September 11th, the whole British squadron on Lake Champlain surrendered to one of in- ferior forct?, under the command of Commodore Macdonough ; and a powerful British army was at the same time repulsed at Plattsburg by a body of unJisriplined militia, under General M'Comb. February 20th, 1815, the 13 lii^ed States' frigate Constitution, Capt. Stewart, captured the British frigate Cyane, and sloop of war Levant, which together mounted fifty-four guns. March 23d, the United States' sloop of war Hornet cap- tured and sunk the British brig Penguin. The above is a brief catalogue of the most important nautical events of the late war ; and in almost every instance the disparity of force was in favour of the British. To recapitulate the minor successes of the United States' public and private armed vessels would swell this note to a history. Efpre we have a catalogue of sixteen American victories, — over Jive frigates, five brigs of war, four sloops of war, and two whole squadrons on the Lakes. Note VII.— Pa^e 341. " Attack on New-Orleans-" — Mr. Croly has either never read the his- tory of the origin of this important expedition or else his memory must be treacherous. The British ministers had set their hearts upon the suc- cess of this " demonstration," as they called it ; and in order, as they thought, to prevent the possibility of a failure, they selected the hardy veterans who had covered themselves with laurels in the fields of Spain, under Wellington. No pains, no expense was spared to have the forces suitably equipped and amply provided at all points. The whole was committed to the direction of a well-tried leader, of approved courage, skill, and experience. The occupation of New-Orleans, the very key to all the western States, was not only a favourite object with the ministry, but a popular measure with the nation ; and had they succeeded, some pretext would doubtless have been found to annul the treaty of Ghent. /J . 0' .^ 'oK -'' ,^^^..-/"^ "o V '^rO lOv% DOBBSBROS. ^V^^A**^ ^^ a'^ »'' LIBRARY BINDING A\\^^ //% o •>* ^A JAN "^9. ST. AUGUSTINE "^ /^^ FLA. ^^^jr?7^ * o