;s' TWEiTT-Fr^E m mm. 
 
 No. I. 
 
 <) 
 
 
 N E AV Y U K : 
 ES 0. NOYES, FUBLTSHEil, t 
 
 5 HOWARD STREET, 
 
 1860, 
 
 i:' 
 
 t 
 
 The Tradi supplied by the Whole^ah 2.\ crs Agentb. 
 
 in 
 
 ■1:
 
 m-
 
 THE FOUR GEORGES : 
 
 SKETCHES OF MANNERS, :M ORALS, 
 
 COURT AND TOWN LIFE. * 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM M. THACKERAY. 
 
 WITH AN ILLUSTRATION. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 JAMES 0. NOYES, PUBLISHER, 
 
 26 HOWARD STREET 
 18 6 0.
 
 NOTES' SERIALS. 
 
 i(DW ll^Df. 
 
 Xc. I.-T HE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 Sketches of Manners, Morals, Court and Town Life. 
 By "Wjc K. Thackerat, 
 
 No. II.-MEMOIRS OF A NULLIFIER. 
 
 Au Inimitable Burlesque on Yankeedom. With a Historical Sketch 
 
 OF Nullification in 1832 and 1833. 
 
 No. III.— A YANKEE AMONG THE 
 NULLIFIERS. 
 
 A Cutting Satire on Secession. 
 
 Every Number complete. Price, paper covers, 10 cents; enameled 
 boards, 25 cents. Mailed, postage free, on receipt of the price. 
 
 The object of the Serials is to furnish, semi-monthly, in a cheap and 
 popular form, Original Stories, Sketches, &c., with the best productions 
 of current literature. Published on the 10th and 25th of each month- 
 
 JAMES 0. NOYES, 25 Howard-st, N. IR 
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by 
 
 JAMES O. NOYES, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southcra 
 
 I>it;.rict of New York.
 
 GEORGE THE FIRST. 
 
 AVERY-few years since 
 I knew familiarly a 
 lady who had been asked 
 in marriage by Horace Wal- 
 pole ; who had been patted 
 on the head by George I. 
 This lady had knocked at 
 Johnson's door, had been in- 
 timate with Fox, the beauti- 
 ful Georgina of Devonshire, 
 and that brilliant Whig so- 
 ciety of the reign of George 
 III. ; had known the Duch- 
 ess of Queensberry, the patroness of Gay and Prior, the admired 
 young beauty of the court of Queen Anne. I often thought, as I 
 took my kind old friend's hand, how with it I held on to the old so- 
 ciety of wits and men of the world. I could travel back for seven 
 score years of time — have glimpses of Brummell, Selwyn, Chester- 
 field, and the men of pleasure ; of Walpole and Conway ; of John- 
 son, Reynolds, Goldsmith; of North, Chatham, Newcastle; of the 
 fair maids of honor of George II. 's court ; of the German retain- 
 ers of George I.'s; where Addison was Secretary of State ; 
 where Dick Steele held a place ; whither the great Marlborough 
 came with his fiery spouse ; when Pope, and Swift, and Boling- 
 broke yet lived and wrote. Of a society so vast, busy, brilliant, 
 it is impossible in four brief chapters to give a complete notion ; 
 but we may peep here and there into that by-gone world of th<» 
 Cre trjres, see what they and their courts were hko ; glA<ir«» k^ 
 tilt' pik-^ph) louud about them; look at past mannt-rj, t!iaaii>»\,«, 
 pleasures, and contrast them with our own. I have to say thus
 
 4 THE FOTJE GEOEGES, 
 
 much by way of preface, because the subject of these lectures 
 has been misunderstood, and I have been taken to task for not 
 having given grave historical treatises, which it was never my 
 intention to attempt. Not about battles, about politics, about 
 statesmen and measures of state, did I ever think to lecture you : 
 but to sketch the manners and life of the Old World ; to amuse 
 for a few hours with talk about the old society ; and, with the 
 result of many a day's and night's pleasant reading, to try and 
 while awfiy a few winter evenings for my hearers. 
 
 Among the German princes who sate under L ither at Witten- 
 berg was Duke Ernest of Celle, whose younger son, William of 
 Lvineberg, was the progenitor of the illustrious Hanoverian House 
 at present reigning in Great Britain. Duke William held his 
 court at Celle, a httle town of ten thousand people that lies on 
 the railway line between Hamburg and Hanover, in the midst 
 of great plains of sand, upon the River Aller. When Duke 
 William had it, it was a very humble wood-built place, with a 
 great brick church, which he sedulously frequented, and in which 
 h*^ and others of his House lie buried. He was a very religious 
 lord, and called William the Pious by his small circle of subjects, 
 over, whom he ruled till fate deprived him both of sight and 
 reason. Sometimes, in his latter days, the good Duke had 
 ghmpses of mental light, when he would bid his musicians play 
 the psalm-tunes which he loved. One thinks of a descendant of 
 his, two hundred years afterward, blind, old, and lost of wits, 
 singing Handel in Windsor Tower. 
 
 William the Pious had fifteen children, eight daughters and 
 seven sons, who, as the property left among them was small, 
 drew lots to determine which one of them should marry and 
 continue the stout race of the Guelphs. The lot fell on Duke 
 George, the sixth brother. The others remained single, or con- 
 tracted left-handed marriages, after the princely fashion of those 
 days. It is a queer picture — that of the old prince dying in his 
 little wood-built capital, and his seven sons tossing up which 
 should inherit and transmit the crown of Brentford. Duke 
 George, the lucky prize-man, made the tour of Europe, during 
 which he visited the court of Queen Elizabeth ; and in the year 
 1617 came back and settled at Zell, with a wife out of Darm- 
 stadt. His remaining brothers all kept their house at ZeU, for 
 ecooomy's sake. And presently, in due com:se, they all diod— -
 
 GEORGE THE FIEST. 5 
 
 all the honest .dukes; Ernest, and Christian, and Augustus, and 
 Magnus, and George, and John — and they are buried in the 
 brick church of Brentford yonder, by the sandy banks of the 
 Aller. 
 
 Dr. Vehse gives a pleasant glimpse of the way of life of our 
 dukes in Zell. " When the trumpeter on the tower has blown," 
 Duke Christian orders — viz., at nine o'clock in the morning and 
 four in the evening every one must be present at meals, and 
 those who are not must go without. None of the servants, un- 
 less it be a knave who has been ordered to ride out, shall eat or 
 drink in the kitchen or cellar ; or, without special leave, fodder 
 his horses at the prince's cost. When the meal is served in the 
 court-room, a page shall go round and bid every one be quiet 
 and orderly, forbidding all cursing, swearing, and rudeness; all 
 throwing about of bread, bones, or roast, or pocketing of the 
 same. Every morning, at seven, the squires shall have their 
 morning soup, along with which, and dinner, they shall be 
 served with their under-drink — every morning except Friday 
 morning, when there was sermon, and no drink. Every even- 
 ing they shall have their beer, and at night their sleep-drink. 
 The butler is especially warned not to allow noble or simple to 
 go into the cellar : wine shall only be served at the prince's or 
 councilor's table; and every Monday, the honest old Duke 
 Christian ordains the accounts shall be ready, and the expenses 
 in the kitchen, the wine and beer cellar, the bakehouse and 
 stable, made out. 
 
 Duke George, the marrying duke, did not stop at home to par- 
 take of the beer and wine, and the sermons. He went about 
 fighting wherever there was profit to be had. He served as 
 general in the army of the circle of Lower Saxony, the Protes- 
 tant army ; then he went over to the emperor and fought in his 
 armies in Germany and Italy; and when Gustavus Adolphus 
 appeared in Germany, George took service as a Swedish general, 
 and seized the Abbey of Hildesheim as his share of the plunder. 
 Here, in the year 1641, Duke George died, leaving four sons 
 behind him, from the youngest of whom descend our royal 
 Georges. 
 
 Under these children of Duke George, the old God-fearinp:, 
 simple ways of Zell appear to have gone out of mode. Tiit» 
 second brother was constantly visiting Venice, and leading a
 
 6 THE FOTJE GEORGES. 
 
 jolly, wicked life there. It was the most jovial of all places at 
 the end of the seventeenth centurv : and military men, after a 
 campaign, rushed thither, as the warriors of the Allies rushed to 
 Paris in 1814, to gamble, and rejoice, and partake of all sorts of 
 godless delights. This prince, then, loving Venice and its 
 pleasures, brought ItaUan singers and dancers back with him to 
 quiet old Zell ; and, worse still, demeaned himself by marrying a 
 French lady of birth quite inferior to his own — Eleanor D'Ol- 
 breuse, from whom our queen is descended. Eleanor had a 
 pretty daughter, who inherited a great fortune, which inflamed 
 her cousin, George Louis of Hanover, with a desire to marry her ; 
 and so, with her beauty and her riches, she came to a sad end. 
 
 It is too long to tell how the four sons of Duke George divided 
 his territories among them, and how, finally, they came into pos- 
 session of the son of the youngest of the four. In this genera- 
 tion the Protestant faith was very nearly extinguished in the 
 family : and then where should we in England have gone for a 
 king ? The third brother also took delight in Italy, where the 
 priests converted him and his Protestant chaplain too. Mass 
 was said in HaAover once more ; and Italian soprani piped their 
 Latin rhymes in place of the hymns which William the Pious 
 and Dr. Luther sang. Louis XIV. gave this and other converts 
 a splendid pension. Crowds of Frenchmea and brilUant French 
 fashions came into his court. It is incalculable how much that 
 royal bigwig cost Germany. Every prince imitated the French 
 king, and had his Versailles, his Wilhelmshohe or Ludwigslust ; 
 his court and its splendors ; his gardens laid out with statues ; 
 his fountains, and water-works, and Tritons; his actors, and 
 dancers, and singers, and fiddlers ; his harem, with its inhabit- 
 ants ; his diamonds and duchies for these latter ; his enormous 
 festivities, his gaming-tables, tournaments, masquerades, and 
 banquets lasting a week long, for which the people paid with 
 their money, when the poor wretches had it — with their bodies 
 and very blood when they had none ; being sold in thousands 
 by their lords and masters, who gayly dealt in soldiers, staked a 
 regiment upon the red at the gambling table ; swapped a bat- 
 tahon against a dancing-girl's diamond necklace ; and, as it were, 
 pocketed their people. 
 
 As one views Europe through contemporary books of travel 
 in lie ftarly part of last century, the landscape is awful — wretohctl
 
 GEORGE THE FIRST. 7 
 
 ■wastes, beggarly and plundered ; half-burned cottages and trem- 
 bling peasants gathering piteous harvests ; gangs of such tramp- 
 
 ng along with bayonets behind them, and corporals with canes 
 and cats-of-nine-tails to flog them to barracks. By these passes 
 my lord's gilt carriage floundering through the ruts, as he swears 
 at the postillions, and toils on to the Residenz. Hard by, but 
 away from the noise and brawling of the citizens and buyers, is 
 Wilhelmslust, or Ludwigsruhe, or Monbijou, or Versailles — it 
 scarcely matters which — near to the city, shut out by woods 
 from the beggared country, the enormous, hideous, gilded, mon- 
 strous marble palace, where the prince is, and the court, and the 
 trim gardens, and huge fountains, and the forest where the rag- 
 ged peasants are beating the game in (it is death to them to 
 touch a feather) ; and the jolly hunt sweeps by with its uniform 
 of crimson and gold ; and the prince gallops ahead, puffing his 
 royal horn ; and his lords and mistresses ride after him ; and the 
 stag is pulled down ; and the grand huntsman gives the knife in 
 the midst of a chorus of bugles, and 'tis time the court go home 
 to dinner ; and our noble traveler, it may be the Baron of P61I- 
 nitz, or the Count de Konigsmarck, or the excellent Chevalier de 
 Seingalt, sees the procession gleaming through the trim avenues 
 of the wood, and hastens to the inn, and sends his noble name 
 to the marshal of the court. Then our nobleman arrays himself 
 in green and gold, or pink and silver, in the richest Paris mode, 
 and is introduced by the chamberlain, and makes his bow to the " 
 jolly prince and the gracious princess : is presented to the chief 
 lords and ladies, and then comes supper and a bank at faro, 
 where he loses or wins a thousand pieces by daylight. If it is a 
 Grerraan court, you may add not a little drunkenness to this pic- 
 ture of high hfe ; but German, or French, or Spanish, if you can 
 see out of your palace-windows beyond the trim-cut forest vis- 
 tas, misery is lying outside ; hunger is stalking about the bare 
 villages, Hstlessly following precarious husbandry ; plowing stony 
 fields with starved cattle ; or fearfully taking in scanty harvests. 
 Augustus is fat and jolly on his throne; he can knock down an 
 ox, and eat one almost; his mistress, Aurora Von Konigsmarck, 
 is the loveliest, the wittiest creature ; liis diamonds are the big- 
 gest and most brilliant in the world, and his feasts as splendid 
 as those of Versailles. As for Louis the Great, he is more than 
 mortal. Lift up yoar glances respectfully, and mark him evcng
 
 8 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 Madame de Fontanges or Madame de Montespan from under his 
 sublime periwig, as he passes through the great gallery where 
 Villars, and Vendome, and Berwick, and Bossuet, and Massillon 
 are waiting. Can court be more splendid ; nobles and knights 
 more gallant and superb ; ladies more lovely ? A grander mon- 
 arch, or a more miserable, starved wretch than the peasant his 
 subject you can not look on. Let us bear both these types in 
 mind, if we wish to estimate the old society properly. Remem- 
 ber the glory and the chivalry ! Yes I Remember the grace 
 and beauty, the splendor and lofty politeness ; the gallant cour- 
 tesy of Fountenoy, where the French line bids the gentlemen of 
 the English guard to fire first ; the noble constancy of the old 
 King and Villars, his general, who fits out the last army with the 
 last crown-piece from the treasury, and goes to meet the enemy 
 and die or conquer for France at Denain. But round all that 
 royal splendor Ues a nation enslaved and ruined ; there are people 
 robbed of their rights ; communities laid waste ; faith, justice, 
 commerce trampled upon, and well nigh destroyed ; nay, in the 
 very center of royalty itself, what horrible stains and meanness, 
 crime and shame 1 It is but to a silly harlot that some of the 
 noblest gentlemen, and some of the proudest women in the 
 world, are bowing down ; it is the price of a miserable province 
 that the king ties in diamonds round his mistress's white neck. 
 In the first half of the last century, I say, this is going on all 
 Europe over. Saxony is a waste, as well as Picardy or Artois ; 
 and Versailles is only larger and not worse than Herrenhausen. 
 
 It was the first Elector of Hanover who made the fortunate 
 match which bestowed the race of Hanoverian Sovereigns upon 
 us Britons. Nine years after Charles Stuart lost his head, his 
 niece Sophia, one of many children of another luckless, dethroned 
 sovereign, the Elector Palatine, married Ernest Augustus of 
 Brunswick, and brought the reversion to the crown of the three 
 kingdoms in her scanty trousseau. One of the handsomest, the 
 most cheerful, sensible, shrewd, accomplished of women was 
 Sophia, daughter of poor Frederick, the winter King of Bohemia. 
 The other daughters of lovely, unhappy Elizabeth Stuart, went 
 off into the Catholic Church ; this one, luckily for her family, re- 
 mained, I can not say faithful, to the Reformed Religion, but at 
 least she adopted no other. An. agent of the French King's, 
 Gourville, a convert himself, strove to bring her and her husband
 
 GEORGE THE FmST. 9 
 
 to a sense of the truth ; and tells us that he one day asked 
 Madame the Duchess of Hanover of what religion her daughter 
 Tva?, then a pretty girl of tliirteen years old. The Duchess re- 
 phed that the princess was of 710 religion as yet. They were 
 waiting to know of what rehgion her husband would be, Protes- 
 tant or CathoUc, before instructing her ! And the Duke of Hano- 
 ver, having heard all GourviUe's proposal, said that a change 
 would be advantageous to lais house, but that he himself was too 
 old to change. 
 
 This shrewd woman liad such keen eyes that she knew how 
 to shut them upon occasion, and was blind to many faults which 
 it appeared that her husband, the Bishop of Osnaburg and Duke 
 of Hanover, committed. He loved to take his pleasure like other 
 sovereigns — was a merry prince, fond of dinner and the bottle ; 
 liked to go to Italy, as his brothers had done before him ; and 
 we read how he jovially sold sis thousand seven hundred of his 
 Hanoverians to the seigniory of Venice. They went bravely off 
 to the Morea, under command of Ernest's son, Prince Max, and 
 only one thousand four hundred of them ever came home again. 
 The German princes sold a good deal of this kind of stock. You 
 may remember how George III.'s Government purchased Hes- 
 sians, and the use we made of them during the ^Var of Independence. 
 The ducats Duke Ernest got for his soldiers he spent in a series 
 of the most brilliant entertainments. Nevertlieless, the jovial 
 prince was economical, and kept a steady eye upon his own in- 
 terests. He achieved the electoral dignity for himself: he mar- 
 ried his eldest son, George, to his beautiful cousin of ZeU ; and 
 sending his sons out in command of armies to fight — now on this 
 side, now on that — he lived on, taking his pleasure, and schem- 
 ing his schemes, a merry, wise prince enough; not, I fear, a 
 moral prince, of which kind we shall have but very few speci- 
 mens in the course of these lectures. 
 
 Ernest Augustus had seven children in all, some of whom 
 were scape-graces, and rebelled against the parental system of 
 primogeniture and non-division of property which the Elector 
 ordained. " Gustchen," the Electress writes about her second 
 son : — " Poor Gus is thrust out, and his father will give him nc 
 more keep. I laugh in the day, and cry all night about it ; for ] 
 am a fool with my children." Three of the six died fightinc 
 against Turks, Tartars, Frenchmen. One of them conspired, n- 
 1*
 
 10 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 volted, fled to Eome, leaving an agent behind him, whose head 
 was taken off. The daughter, of whose early education we have 
 made mention, was married to the Elector of Brandenburg, and 
 so her religion settled finally on the Protestant side. 
 
 A niece of the Electress Sophiai — who had been made to 
 change her religion and marry the Duke of Orleans, brother of 
 the French King ; a woman whose honest heart was always with 
 her friends and dear old Deutschland, though her fat little body 
 was confined at Paris, or Marly, or Versailles — has left us, in her 
 enormous correspondence (part of wliich has been printed in 
 German and French), recollections of the Electress, and of 
 George, her son. Elizabeth Charlotte was at Osnaburg Avhen 
 George was born (1660). She narrowly escaped a whipping 
 for being in the way on that auspicious day. She seems not to 
 have liked little George, nor George grown up ; and represents 
 him as odiously hard, cold, and silent. Silent he may have 
 been : not a jolly prince like his father before him, but a prudent, 
 quiet, selfish potentate, going his own way, managing his own 
 aflairs, and understanding his own interests remarkably well. 
 
 In his father's lifetime, and at the head of the Hanover forces of 
 eight thousand or ten thousand men, George served the Emperor on 
 the Danube against Turks, at the siege of Vienna, in Italy, and on 
 the Rhine. When he succeeded to the Electorate he handled its 
 affairs with great prudence and dexterity. He was very much 
 liked by his people of Hanover. He did not show his feelings 
 much, but he cried, heartily on leaving them ; as they used for 
 joy when he came back. He showed an uncommon prudence 
 and coolness of behavior when he came into his kingdom ; ex- 
 hibiting no elation ; reasonably doubtful whether he should not 
 be turned out some day ; looking upon himself only as a lodger, 
 and making the most of his brief tenure of St. James's and 
 Hampton Court ; plundering, it is true, somewhat, and dividing 
 among his German followers ; but what could be expected of a 
 ■sovereign who at home could sell his subjects at so many ducats 
 per head, and made no scruple in disposing of them ? I fancy a 
 considerable shrewdness, prudence, and even moderation in his 
 ways. The German Protestant was a cheaper, and better, and 
 kinder king than the Catholic Stuart in whose chair he sate, and 
 so far loyal to England that he let England govern herself. 
 
 Having these lectures in view, I made it my business to visit
 
 GEORGE THE FIRST. 11 
 
 that ugly cradle in which our Georges were nursed. The old 
 town of Hanover must look still pretty much as in the time when 
 George Louis left it. The gardens and pavilions of Herrenhausen 
 are scarce changed since the day when the stout old Electress 
 Sophia fell down in her last walk there, preceding but by a few 
 weeks to the tomb James II.'s daughter, whose death made way 
 for the Brunswick Stuarts in England. 
 
 The first two royal Georges, and their father, Ernest Augustus. 
 had quite royal notions concerning marriage, and Louis XIV. 
 and Charles IL scarce distinguished themselves more at Ver- 
 sailles or St. James's than these German sultans in their Httle city 
 on the banks of the Leine. You may see at Herrenhausen the 
 very rustic theater in which the Platens danced and performed 
 masques, and sang before the Elector and his sons. There are 
 the very fauns and dryads of stone still glimmering through the 
 branches, still grinning and piping their ditties of no tone, as m 
 the days when painted nymphs hung garlands round them ; ap- 
 peared under their leafy arcades with gilt crooks, guiding rams 
 with guilt horns ; descended from " machines" in the guise of 
 Diana or Alinerva ; and delivered immense allegorical compli- 
 ments to the princes returned home from the campaign. 
 
 That was a curious state of morals and politics in Europe ; a 
 queer consequence of the triumph of the monarchial principle. 
 Feudalism was beaten down. The nobility, in its quarrels with 
 the crown, had pretty well succumbed, and the monarch was all 
 in all. He became almost divine. The proudest and most an- 
 cient gentry of the land did menial service for him. Who should 
 carry Louis XIV.'s candle when he went to bed ? what prince 
 of the blood should hold the king's shirt, when his Most Chris- 
 tian Majesty changed that garment ? The French memoirs of 
 the seventeenth century are full of such details and squabbles. 
 The tradition is not yet extinct in Europe. Any of you who 
 were present, as myriads were, at that splendid pageant, the 
 opening of our Crystal Palace in London, must have seen two 
 noble lords, great officers of the household, with ancient pedi- 
 grees, with embroidered coats, and stars on their breasts, and 
 wands in their hands, walking backward for near the space of a 
 mile, while the royal procession made its progress. Shall we 
 wonder — shall we be angry — shall we laugh at these old-world 
 ceremonies? View them as you will, according to your mooj
 
 12 . THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 and with scorn or with respect, or with anger and sorrow, as 
 your temper leads you. Up goes G-esler's hat upon the pole. 
 Salute that symbol of sovereignty with heartfelt awe, or with a 
 sulky shrug of acquiescence, or with a grinning obeisance, or, 
 with a stout, rebellious No ! clap your own beaver down on your 
 pate, and refuse to doff it to that spangled velvet and flauntmg 
 feather. I make no comment upon the spectators' behavior ; all 
 I say is, that Gesler's cap is still up in the market-place of Europe, 
 and not a few folks are still kneehng to it. 
 
 Put clumsy, high Dutch statues in place of the marbles of 
 Yersailles ; fancy Herrenhausen water-works in the place of 
 those of Marly ; spread the tables with Schweinskopf, Speck- 
 sunpe, Leber kuchen, and the Uke delicacies, in the place of the 
 French cuisine ; and fancy Frau von Keilmansegge dancing with 
 Count Kammerjunker Quirini, or singing French songs with the 
 most awful Grerman accent ; imagine a coarse Versailles, and we 
 have a Hanover before us. " I am now got into the region of 
 beauty," writes Mary Wortley, from Hanover, in 1716 ; " all tlie 
 women have literally rosy cheeks, snowy foreheads and necks, 
 jet eyebrows, to Avhich may generally be added coal-black hair. 
 Tnese perfections never leave them to the day of their death, 
 and have a very fine effect by candle-light ; but I could wish 
 they were handsome with a little variety. They resemble one 
 another as Mrs. Salmon's Court of Great Britain, and are in as 
 much danger of melting away by too nearly approaching the 
 fire." The sly Mary Wortley saw this painted seraglio of the 
 first George at Hanover, the year after his accession to the Brit- 
 ish throne. There were great doings and feasts there. Here 
 Lady Mary saw George II. too. " I can tell you, without flat- 
 tery or partiality," she says, " that our young prince has all the 
 accomplishments that it is possible to have at his age, with an air 
 of sprightliness and understanding, and a something so very en- 
 gaging in his behavior, that needs not the advantage of his rank, 
 to appear charming." I find elsewhere similar panegyrics upon 
 Frederick, Prince of Wales, George II.'s son; and upon George 
 III., of coarse, and upon George IV. in an eminent degree. It 
 was the rule to be dazzled by princes, and people's eyes ^vinked 
 quite honestly at that royal radiance. 
 
 The Electoral Court of Hanover was numerous — pretty well 
 paid, as times went ; above all, paid with a regulaiity which few
 
 GEORGE THE FIRST, 13 
 
 other European courts could boast of. Perhaps you wnll be 
 amused to know how the Electoral Court was composed. There 
 were the princes of the house in the first class ; in the second, 
 the single field-marshal of the army (the contingent w£is eighteen 
 tliousand, PoUnitz says, and the Elector had other fourteen thous- 
 and troops in liis pay). Then follow, in due order, the authorities, 
 civil and military, the working privy councilors, the generals of 
 cavalry and infantry, inthe third class; the high chamberlain, high 
 marshals of the court, high masters of the horse, the major-gen- 
 erals of cavalry and infantry, in the fourth class, down to the 
 majors, the HoQunkers, or pages, the secretaries or assessors, of 
 the tenth class^ of whom all were noble. 
 
 We find the master of the horse had one thousand and ninety 
 thalers of pay ; the high chamberlain, two thousand — a thaler being 
 about three shillings of our money. There were two chamberlains, 
 and one for the princess ; five gentlemen of the chamber, and five 
 gentlemen ushers ; eleven pages, and personages to educate these 
 young noblemen — such as a governor, a preceptor, a fecht-meister, 
 or fencing master, and a dancing ditto, this latter with a handsome 
 salary of four hundred thalers. There were three body and court 
 physicians, with eight hundred and five hundred thalers ; a court 
 barber, six hundred thalers ; a court organist ; two musikanten ; 
 four French fiddlers ; twelve trumpeters, and a bugler ; so that 
 there was plenty of music, profane and pious, in Hanover. There 
 were ten chamber waiters, and twenty-four lackeys in hvery ; a 
 maitre-d'hotel, and attendants of the kitchen ; a French cook ; a 
 body cook : ten cooks ; six cooks' assistants ; two Braten mas- 
 ters, or masters of the roast (one fancies enormous spits turning 
 slowly, and the honest masters of the roast beladling the drip- 
 ping) ; a pastry baker ; a pie baker ; and, finally, tliree scullions, 
 at the modest remuneration of eleven thalers. In the sugar- 
 chamber there were four pastry cooks (for the ladies, no doubt) ; 
 seven officers in the wine and beer cellars ; four bread bakers ; and 
 five men in the plate-room. There were six hundred horses in the 
 Serene stables — no less than twenty teams of princely carriage 
 horses, eight to a team ; sixteen coachmen ; fourteen postillions ; 
 nineteen hostlers ; thirteen helps, besides smiths, cairiage-raas- 
 ters, horse doctors, and other attendants of the stable. The 
 female attendants were not so numerous: I grieve to find but a 
 dozen or fourteen of them about the Electoi-al premises, and only
 
 14 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 two washerwomen for all the Court. These functionaries had 
 not so much to do as in the present age. I own to finding a 
 pleasure in these small beer chronicles. I like to people the old 
 world with its every day figures and inhabitants — not so much 
 with heroes fighting immense battles and inspiring repulsed bat- 
 talions to engage, or statesmen locked up in darkling cabinets, 
 and meditating ponderous laws or dire conspiracies, as with 
 people occupied with their every day work or pleasure — my 
 lord and lady hunting in the forest, or dancing in the Court, or 
 bowing to their serene highnesses as they pass in to dinner; 
 John Cook and his procession bringing the meal from the kitchen ; 
 the jolly butlers bearing in the flagons from the cellar; the stout 
 coachman driving the ponderous gilt wagon, with eight cream- 
 colored horses in housings of scarlet velvet and morocco leather ; 
 a postillion on the leaders, and a pair or half a dozen of running 
 footmen scudding along by the side of the vehicle, with conical 
 caps, long silver-headed maces, which they poised as they ran, 
 and splendid jackets laced all over with silver and gold. I fancy 
 the citizens' wives and their daughters looking out from the bal- 
 conies ; and the burghers, over their beer and nmm, rising up, 
 cap in hand, as the cavalcade passes through the town with 
 torch-bearers, trumpeters blowing their lusty cheeks out, anJ 
 squadrons of jack-booted life-guardsmen, girt with shining cui- 
 rasses, and bestriding thundering chargers, escorting his highness's 
 coach from Hanover to Herrenhausen ; or halting, mayhap, at 
 Madame Platen's country-house of Monplaisir, which hes half 
 way between the summer palace and the Residenz. 
 
 In the good old times of which I am treating, while common 
 men were driven off by herds, and sold to fight the emperor's 
 enemies on t.he Danube, or to bayonet King Louis' troops of 
 common men on the Rhine, noblemen passed from court to 
 court, seeldng service with one prince or the other, and natur- 
 ally taking command of the ignoble vulgar of soldiery which 
 battled and died almost without hope of promotion. Noble ad- 
 venturers traveled from court to court in search of employment; 
 not merely noble males, but noble females too; and if these 
 latter were beauties, and obtained the favorable notice of princes, 
 they stopped in the courts, became the favorites of their Serene 
 or Royal Highnesses ; and received great sums of money and 
 splendid diamonds ; and were promoted to be duchesses, mar-
 
 GEORGE THE FIRST. 15 
 
 chionesses, and the like ; and did not fall much in public esteem 
 for the manner in which they won their advancement. In this 
 way Mademoiselle de Querouailles, a beautiful French lady, came 
 to London on a special mission of Louis XIV., and was adopted 
 by our grateful country and sovereign, and figured as the Duchess 
 of Portsmouth. In this way the beautiful Aurora of Konigsmarck, 
 traveling about, found favor in the eyes of Augustus of Saxony, 
 and became the mother of Marshal Saxe, who gave us a beating at 
 Fountenoy ; and in this manner the lovely sisters Elizabeth and 
 Melusina of Meissenbach (who had actually been driven out of 
 Paris, whither they had traveled on a like errand, by the wise jeal- 
 ousy of the female favorite there in possession) journeyed to Han- 
 over, and became favorites of the serene house there reigning. 
 
 That beautiful Aurora von Konigsmarck and her brother are 
 wonderful as types of by-gone manners, and strange illustrations 
 of the morals of old days. The Konigsmarcks were descended 
 from an ancient noble family o^ Brandenburg, a branch of which 
 passed into Sweden, where it enriched itself and produced sev- 
 eral mighty men of valor. 
 
 The founder of the race was Hans Christof, a famous warrior 
 and plunderer of the thirty years' war. One of Hans's sons, 
 Otto, appeared as embassador at the court of Louis XIV., and 
 had to make a Swedish speech at his reception before the Most 
 Christian King. Otto was a famous dandy and warrior, but be 
 forgot the speech, and what do you think he did ? Far from 
 being disconcerted, he recited a portion of the Swedish Cate- 
 chism to his Most Christian Majesty and his court, not one of 
 whom understood his lingo with the exception of his own suite, 
 who had to keep their gravity as best they might. 
 
 Otto's nephew, Aurora's elder brother, Carl Johann of Konigs- 
 marck, a favorite of Charles II., a beauty, a dandy, a warrior, a 
 rascal of more than ordinary mark, escaped but deserved being 
 hanged in England for the murder of Tom Thynne of Longleat. 
 He had a Httle brother in London with him at this time : — as 
 great a beauty, as great a dandy, as great a villain a? his elder. 
 This lad, Philip of Konigsmarck, also was implicated in the affair; 
 and perhaps it is a pity he ever brought his pretty neck out of 
 it. He went over to Hanover, and was soon appointed colonel 
 of a regiment of H.E. Highness's dragoons. In early life he had 
 been page in the court of Celle ; and it was said that he and tho
 
 16 THE FOUK GEORGES. 
 
 pretty Princess Sophia Dorothea, who by this time was married 
 to her cousin G-eorge, the Electoral Prince, had been in love with 
 each other as children. Their loves were now to be renewed, 
 not innocently, and to come to a fearful end. 
 
 A biography of the wife of George I, by Dr. Doran, has 
 lately appeared, and I confess I am astounded at the verdict 
 which that writer has delivered, and at his acquittal of this most 
 unfortunate lady. That she had a cold, selfish libertine of a hus- 
 band no one can doubt ; but that the bad husband had a bad 
 wife is equally clear. She was married to her cousin for money 
 or convenience, as all princesses were married. She was most 
 beautiful, lively, witty, accomplished : his brutality outraged her : 
 his silence and coldness chilled her : his cruelty insulted her. No 
 wonder she did not love him. How could love be a part of the 
 compact in such a marriage as that ? With this unlucky heart 
 to dispose of, the poor creature bestowed it on Philip of Konigs- 
 marck, than whom a greater sca^pp does not walk the history of 
 the seventeenth century. A hundred and eighty years after 
 the fellow was thrust into his unknown grave, a Swedish pro- 
 fessor Hghts upon a box of letters in the University Library at 
 Upsala, written by Philip and Dorothea to each other, and tell- 
 ing their miserable story. 
 
 The bewitching Konigsmarck had conquered two female hearts 
 in Hanover. Besides the Electoral Prince's lovely young wife, 
 Sophia Dorothea, Phihp had inspired a passion in a hideous old 
 court lady, the Countess of Platen. The princess seems to have 
 pursued him with the fidehty of many years. Heaps of letters 
 followed him on his campaigns, and were answered by the dar- 
 ing adventurer. The princess wanted to fly with him ; to quit 
 her odious husband at any rate. She besought her parents to 
 receive her back ; had a notion of taking refuge in France and 
 going over to the Cathohc religion ; had absolutely packed her 
 jewels for flight, and very likely arranged its details with her 
 lover, in that last long night's interview, after which Philip of 
 Konigsmarck was seen no more. 
 
 Konigsmarck, inflamed with drink — there is scarcely any vice 
 of which, according to his own«howing, this gentleman was not 
 a practitioner — had boasted at a supper at Dresden of his inti- 
 macy with the two Hanoverian ladies — not only with the prin- 
 pess, but with another lady powerful in Hanover. The Countess
 
 GEOEGE THE FIRST. 17 
 
 Platen, the old favorite of the Elector, hated the young Electoral 
 Princess. The young lady had a lively wit, and constantly made 
 fun of the old one. The princess's jokes were conveyed to the 
 old Platen, just as our idle words are carried about at this pres- 
 ent day, and so they both hated each other. 
 
 The characters in the tragedy, af which the curtain was now 
 about to fall, are about as dark a set as eye ever rested on. 
 There is the jolly prince, shrewd, selfish, scheming, loving his 
 cups and his ease (I think his good-humor makes the tragedy 
 but darker) ; his princess, who speaks little, but observes all ; 
 his old, painted Jezebel of a mistress ; his son, the Electoral 
 Prince, shrewd too, quiet, selfisli, not ill-humored, and generally 
 silent, except when goaded into fury by the intolerable tongue 
 of his lovely wife ; there is poor Sophia Dorothea, with her 
 coquetry and her wrongs, and her passionate attachment to her 
 scamp of a lover, and her wild imprudences, and her mad arti- 
 fices, and her insane fideUty, and. her furious jealousy regarding 
 her husband (though she loathed and cheated him), and her pro- 
 digious falsehoods; and the confidante, of course, into whose 
 hands the letters are slipped ; and tliere is Lothario, finally, than 
 whom, as I have said, one can't imagine a more handsome, 
 wicked, worthless reprobate. 
 
 How that perverse fidelity of passion pursues the villain I 
 How madly true the woman is, and how astoundingly she- ies 
 She has bewitched two or three persons who have taken her up, 
 and they won't believe in her wrong. Like Mary of Scotland, 
 she finds adherents ready to conspire for her even in history ; 
 and people who have to deal with her are charmed, and fascin- 
 ated, and bedeviled. How devotedly Miss Strickland has stood 
 by Mary's innocence I Are there not scores of ladies in this 
 audience who persist in it too ? Innocent I I remember as a 
 boy how a great party persisted in declaring Caroline of Bruns- 
 wick was a martyred angel. So was Helen of Greece innocent. 
 She never ran away with Paris, the dangerous young Trojan. 
 Menelaus her husband ill-used her ; and there never was any 
 siege of Troy at all. So was Bluebeard's wife innocent. She 
 never peeped into the closet where the other wives were with 
 their heads off. She never dropped the key, or stained it with 
 blood ; and her brothers were quite right in finishing Bluebeard, 
 the cowardly brute 1 Yes, Carohne of Brunswick was inno-
 
 18 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 cent ; and Madame Laffarge never poisoned her husband ; and 
 Mary of Scotland never blew up hers; and poor Sophia Doro- 
 thea was never unfaithful ; and Eve never took the apple — it 
 was a cowardly fabrication of the serpent's. 
 
 George Louis has been held up to execration as a murderous 
 Bluebeard, whereas the Electoral Prince had no share in the 
 transaction in which Philip of Konigsmarck was scuffled out of 
 this mortal scene. The prince was absent when the catastrophe 
 came. The princess had had a hundred warnings ; mild hints 
 from her husband's parents ; grim remonstrances from himself — 
 but took no more heed of such advice than such besotted poor 
 wretches do. On the night of Sunday, the 1st of July, 1694, 
 Konigsmarck paid a long visit to the princess, and left her to get 
 ready for flight. Her husband was away at Berlin ; her carriage 
 and horses were prepared and ready for the elopement. Mean- 
 •Arhile the spies of Countess Paten had brought the news to their 
 mistress. She went to Ernest Augustus, and procured from the 
 Elector an order for the arrest of the Swede. On the way by 
 which he was to come four guards were commissioned to take 
 him. He strove to cut his way chrough the four men, and 
 wounded more than one of them. They fell upon him ; out him 
 down ; and, as he was lying wounded on the ground, the count- 
 ess, his enemy, whom he had betrayed and insulted, came out 
 and beheld him prostrate. He cursed her with his dying lips, 
 and the furious woman stamped upon his mouth with her heel. 
 He was dispatched presently; his body burned the next day; 
 and all traces of the man disappeared. The guards who killed 
 him were enjoined silence under severe penalties. The princess 
 was reported to be ill in her apartments, from which she was 
 taken in October of the same year, being then eight-and-twenty 
 years old, and consigned to the castle of Ahlden, where she re- 
 mained a prisoner for no less than thirty-two years. A separa- 
 tion had been pronounced previously between her and her hus- 
 band. She Avas called henceforth the " Princess of Ahlden," 
 and her silent husband no more uttered her name. 
 
 Fom- years after the Konigsmarck catastrophe Ernest Augus- 
 tus, the first Elector of Hanover, died, and George Louis, liis 
 son, reigned in his stead. Sixteen years he reigned in Hanover, 
 after which he became, as we know. King of Great Britain, 
 France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith. The wicked old
 
 GEORGE THE FIRST. 19 
 
 Countess Platen died in the year 1706. She had lost her sight, 
 but nevertheless the legend says that she constantly saw Kon- 
 igsrnarck's ghost by her wicked old bed. And so there was an 
 end of her. 
 
 In the year 1700 the little Duke of Grloucester, the last of 
 poor Queen Anne's children, died, and the folks of Hanover 
 straightway became of prodigious importance in England. The 
 Electress Sophia was declared, the next in succession to the 
 English throne. Greorge Louis was created Duke of Cambridge ; 
 grand deputations were sent over from our country to Deut^ch- 
 land ; but Queen Anne, whose weak heart hankered after her 
 relatives at St. Germains, never could be got to all»w her cousin, 
 the Elector Duke of Cambridge, to come and pay his respects to 
 her Majesty, and take his seat in her House of Peers. Had the 
 Queen lasted a month longer ; had the English Tories been as 
 bold^nd resolute as they were clever and crafty; had the prince 
 whom the nation loved and pitied been equal to his fortune, 
 George Louis had never talked German in St. James's Chapel 
 Eoyal. 
 
 When the crown did come to George Louis he was in no 
 hurry about putting it on. He waited at home for a while ; 
 took an affecting farewell of his dear Hanover and Herren- 
 hausen; and set out in the most leisurely manner to ascend the 
 " throne of his ancestors," as he called it in his first speech to 
 Parliament. He brought with him a compact body of Germans, 
 whose society he loved, and whom he kept round the royal per- 
 son. He had his faithful German chamberlains; his Germar 
 secretaries ; his negroes, captives of his bow and spear in Turk- 
 ish wars ; his two ugly, elderly German favorites, Mesdames of 
 Kielmansegge and Schulenberg, whom he created respectivflv 
 Countess of Darlington and Duchess of Kendal. The Duchess 
 was tall and lean of stature, and hence was irreverently nick- 
 named the Maypole. The Countess was a large-sized noble- 
 woman, and this elevated personage was denominated the Ele- 
 phant. Both of these ladies loved Hanover and its delights ; 
 clung round the linden-trees of the great Herrenhausen avenue, 
 and at first would not quit the place. Schulenberg, in fact, 
 could not come on account of her debts ; but finding the May- 
 pole would not come, the Elephant packed up her trunk and 
 slipped out of Hanover, unwieldy as .she was. On this the May-
 
 20 THE FOUR GEORGES, 
 
 pole straightway put herself in motion, and followed her beloved 
 George Louis. One seems to be speaking of Captain Macheath, 
 and Polly, and Lucy. The King we had selected; the courtiers 
 who came in his train ; the English nobles who came to wel- 
 come him, and on many of whom the shrewd old cynic turned 
 his back — I protest it is a wonderful, satirical picture I I am a 
 citizen waiting at Greenwich pier, say, and crying hurrah for 
 Kinp- George ; and yet I can scarcely keep ray countenance 
 and help laughing at the enormous absurdity of this advent 1 
 
 Here we are, all on our knees. Here is the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury prostrating himself to the head of his church, with 
 Kielmansegge and Schulenberg with their ruddled cheeks grin- 
 ning behind the defender of the faith. Here is my Lord Duke 
 of Marlborough kneeling too, the greatest warrior of all times ; 
 he who betrayed King William — betrayed King James II. — be- 
 trayed Queen Anne — betrayed England to the French, the Elec- 
 tor to the Pretender, the Pretender to the Elector ; and here are 
 my Lords Oxford and Bohngbroke, the latter of whom has juf^t 
 tripped up the heels of the former; and if a month's more time 
 had been allowed him, would have had King James at West- 
 minster. The great Whig gentlemen made their bows and con- 
 gees with proper decorum and ceremony ; but yonder keen old 
 schemer knows the value of their loyalty. " Loyalty," he must 
 think, " as apphed to me — it is absurd I There are fifty nearer 
 heirs to the throne than I am. I am but an accident, and you 
 fine Whig gentlemen take me for your own sake, not for mine. 
 You Tories hate me ; you archbishop, smirking on your knees, 
 and prating about Heaven, you know I don't care a fig for your 
 Thirty-nine Articles, and can't understand a word of your stupid 
 sermons. You, my Lords Bolingbroke and Oxford — you know 
 you were conspiring against me a month ago ; and you, my 
 Lord Duke of Marlborough — you would sell me, or any man 
 else, if you found your advantage in it. Come, my good Melu- 
 sina, come, my honest Sophia, let us go into my private room, 
 and have some oysters and some Rhine wine, and some pipes 
 afterward: let us make the best of our situation ; let us take 
 what we can get, and leave these bawling, brawling, lying Eng- 
 lish to shout, and fight, and cheat, in their own way !" 
 
 If Swift had not been committed to the statesmen of the 
 losing side, what a fine satirical picture we might have had of
 
 GEORGE THE FIRST. 21 
 
 that general sauve qui peut among the Tory party ! How mum 
 the Tories became ; how the House of Lords and House of Com- 
 mons chopped round ; and how decorously the majorities wel- 
 comed King George 1 
 
 Bolingbroke, making his last speech in the House of Lords, 
 pointed out the shame of peerage, where several lords concurred 
 to condemn in one general vote all that they had approved in 
 former parliaments by many particular resolutions. And so their 
 conduct was shameful. St. John had the best of the argument, 
 but the worst of the vote. Bad times were come for him. He 
 talked philosophy, and professed innocence. He courted retire- 
 ment, and was ready to meet persecution; but hearing that 
 honest Mat Prior, who had been recalled from Paris, was about 
 to peach regarding the past transactions, the philosopher bolted, 
 and took that magnificent head of his out of the ugly reach of 
 the ax. Oxford, the lazy and good-humored, had more courage, 
 and awaited the storm at home. He and Mat Prior both had 
 lodgings in the Tower, and both brought their heads safe out of 
 that dangerous menagerie. When Atterbury was carried off to 
 the same den, a few years afterward, and it was asked what 
 next should be done with him ? " Done with him ? Fling him 
 to the lions!" Cadogan said, Marlborough's lieutenant. But the 
 British lion of those days did not care much for drinking the 
 blood of peaceful peers and poets, or crunching the bones of 
 bishops. Only four men were executed in London for the rebel- 
 lion of 1715 ; and twenty-two in Lancashire. Above a thousand 
 taken in arms submitted to the King's mercy, and petitioned to 
 be transported to his majesty's colonies in America. I have 
 heard that their descendants took the loyalist side in the disputes 
 which arose sixty years after. It is pleasant to find that a friend 
 of ours, worthy Dick Steele, was for letting off the rebels with 
 their lives. 
 
 As one thinks of what might have been, how amusing the specu- 
 lation is I We know how the doomed Scottish gentlemen caoio 
 out at Lord Mar's summons, mounted the white cockade, tLathaa 
 been a flower of Bad poetry ever since, and rallied roircd the ill- 
 omenea btuart standard at Braemar. Mar, with eight thousand 
 men, and but one thousand five hundred opposed to liim, might 
 have driven the enemy over the Tweed, and taken possession of the 
 whole of Scotland ; but that the Pretender's duke did not venture
 
 22 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 to move when the day was his own. Edinburgh castle naight have 
 been in King James's hands ; but that the men who were to esca- 
 lade it staid to drink his health at the tavern, and arrived two 
 hours too late at the rendezvous under the castle wall. There was 
 sympathy enough in the town — the projected attack seems to 
 have been known there — Lord Mahon quotes Sinclair's account 
 of a gentleman not concerned, who told Sinclair that he was in 
 a house that evening where eighteen of them were drinking, as 
 the facetious landlady said, "powdering their hair," for the attack 
 of the castle. Suppose they had not stopped to powder their 
 hair ? Edinburgh Castle, and town, and all Scotland, were King 
 James's. The nortii of England rises, and marches over Barnet 
 Heath upon London. Wyndham is up in Somersetshire ; Pack- 
 ington in Worcestershire ; and Vivian in Cornwall. The Elector 
 of Hanover and his hideous mistresses pack up the plate, and 
 perhaps the crown jewels in London, and are off via Harwich 
 and Helvoetsluys, for dear old Deutschland. The King — God 
 save him ! — lands at Dover, with tumultuous applause ; shouting 
 multitudes, roaring cannon, the Duke of Marlborough weeping 
 tears of joy, and all the bishops kneeling in the mud. In a few 
 years mass is said in St. Paul's ; matins and vespers are sung in 
 York Minster ; and Dr. Swift is turned out of his stall and dean- 
 ery house at St. Patrick's, to give place to Father Dominic, from 
 Salamanca. All these changes were possible then, and once 
 thirty years afterward — all this we might have had, but for the 
 pulveru^ exiguijactu^ that little toss of powder for the hair which 
 the Scotch conspirators stopped to take at the tavern. 
 
 You understand the distinction I would draw between liistory 
 — of wliich I do not aspire to be an expounder — and manners 
 and life such as these sketches would describe. The rebellion 
 breaks out in the north ; its story is before you in a hundred vol- 
 umes, in none more fairly than in the excellent narrative of Lord 
 Mahon. The clans are up in Scotland ; Derwentwater, Nithis- 
 dale, and Forster are in arms in Northumberland — these are mat- 
 ters of histoiy, for which you are referred to the dae chroniclers. 
 The Guards are set to watch the streets and prevent the people 
 wearing white roses. I read presently of a couple of soldiers 
 almost flogged to death for wearing oak-boughs in their hats on 
 the 29th of May — another badge of the beloved Stuarts. It is 
 witli these we hare to do rather than with ihe manjues ana
 
 GEORGE THE FIRST. 23 
 
 battles of the armies to which the poor fellows belonged — with 
 statesmen, and how they looked, and how they lived, rather than 
 with measures of State, which belong to history alone. For ex- 
 ample, at the close of the old queen's reign, it is known the Duke 
 of Marlborough left the kingdom — after what menaces, after 
 what prayers, lies, bribes offered, taken, refused, accepted ; after 
 what dark doubling and tacking, let history, if she can or dare, 
 say. The queen dead ; who so eager to return as my lord duke ? 
 Who shouts God save the king ! so lustily as the great conqueror 
 of Blenheim and Malplaquet ? (By-the-way, he will send over 
 some more money for the Pretender yet, on the sly.) Who 
 lays his hand on his blue ribbon, and lifts his eyes more grace- 
 folly to heaven than this hero ? He makes a quasi-triumphal 
 entrance into London, by Temple Bar, in his enormous gilt 
 coach — and the enormous gilt coach breaks down somewhere 
 by Chancery Lane, and his highness is obhged to get another. 
 There it is we have him. We are with the mob in the crowd, 
 not with the great folks in the procession. We are not the His- 
 toric Muse, but her ladyship's attendant, tale-bearer — valet de 
 chambre — for whom no man is a hero ; and, as yonder one steps 
 from liis carriage to the next handy conveyance, we take the 
 number of the hack; we look all over at his stars, ribbons, em- 
 broidery ; we think within ourselves, O you uniJathomable schem- 
 er I you warrior invincible ! you beautiful smiling Judas ! 
 What master would you not kiss or betray ? What traitor's 
 head, blackening on the spikes on yonder gate, ever hatched a 
 tithe of the treason wliich has worked under your periwig ? 
 
 We have brought our Georges to London city, and if we 
 would behold its aspect, may see it in Hogarth's lively perspec- 
 iL\e of Cheapside, or read of it in a hundred contemporary books 
 wliich paint the manners of that age. Our dear old Spectator 
 looks smiling upon these streets, with their innumerable signs, 
 and describes them with his charming humor. " Our streets are 
 filled -svith Blue Boars, Black Swans, and Red Lions, not to men- 
 tion Flying Pigs and Hogs in Armor, with other creatures more 
 extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africa." A few of 
 these quaint old figures still remain in London town. Tou may 
 still see there, and over its old hostel in Ludgate Hill, the Belle 
 Sauvage to whom the Spectator so pleasantly alludes in t'l^ 
 paper; aud who was, probably, no other thau >-ho> •;vrv*t AroaT"
 
 24 THE FOUK GEORGES. 
 
 can Pocahontas, who rescued from death the daring Captain 
 Smith. There is the Lion's Head, down whose jaws the Spec- 
 tator's own letters were passed ; and over a great banker's in 
 Fleet Street, the effigy of the wallet, which the founder of the 
 firm bore when he came into London a country boy. People 
 this street, so ornamented with crowds of swinging chairmen, 
 with servants bawling to clear the way, with Mr. Dean in his 
 cassock, his lackey marching before him ; or Mrs. Dinah in her 
 sack, tripping to chapel, her foot-boy carrying her ladyship's 
 great prayer-book ; with itinerant tradesmen, singing their hun- 
 dred cries (I remember forty years ago, as a boy in London city 
 a score of cheery, familiar cries, that are silent now). Fancy the 
 beaux thronging to the chocolate-houses, tapping their snuff- 
 boxes as they issue thence, their periwigs appearing over the red 
 curtains. Fancy Saccharissa beckoning and smiling from the 
 upper windows, and a crowd of soldiers brawling and bustling 
 at the door — gentlemen of the Life Gruards, clad in scarlet, with 
 blue facings, and laced with gold at the seams ; gentlemen of the 
 Horse Grenadiers, in their caps of sky-blue cloth, with the gar- 
 ter embroidered on the front in gold and silver ; men of the Hal- 
 berdiers, in their long, red coats, as bluff" Harry left them, with 
 their ruffs and velvet flat caps. Perhaps the King's majesty 
 himself is going to St. James's as we pass. If he is going to 
 Parliament, he is in his coach-and-eight, surrounded by his 
 guards and the high officers of his crown. Otherwise his Ma- 
 jesty only uses a chair, with six footmen walking before, and six 
 yeomen of the guard at the sides of the sedan. The officers in 
 waiting follow the King in coaches. It must be rather slow 
 work. 
 
 Our Spectator and Tattler are full of delightful glimpses of the 
 town life of those days. In the company of that charming guide 
 we may go to the opera, the comedy, the puppet-show, the auc- 
 tion, even the cock-pit : we can take boat at Temple Stairs, and 
 accompany Sir Eoger de Coverley and Mr. Spectator to Spring 
 Garden — it will be called Vauxhall a few years since, when 
 Hogarth will paint for it. Would you not like to step back into 
 the past, and be introduced to Mr. Addison? — not the Right 
 Honorable Joseph Addison, Esq., George I.'s Secretary of State, 
 but to the delightful painter of contemporary manners ; the man 
 who, when in good humor himself, was the pleasantest con'pan-
 
 GEORGE THE FIRST. 25 
 
 ion in all England. I shdhld like to go into Lockit's with him, 
 and drink a bowl along with Sir R. Steele (who has just been 
 knighted by King George, and who does not happen to have 
 any money to pay his share of the reckoning). I should not 
 care to follow Mr. Addison to his secretary's office in White- 
 hall. There we get into politics. Our business is pleasure, and 
 the town, and the coffee-house, and the theater, and the Mall. 
 Dehghtful Spectator ! kind friend of leisure hours ! happy com- 
 panion ! true Christian gentleman I How much greater, better 
 you are than the king Mr. Secretary kneels to I 
 
 You can have foreign testimony about old-world London, if 
 you hke ; and my before-quoted friend, Charles Louis, Baron de 
 Pollnitz, will conduct us to it. "A man of sense," says he, " or 
 a fine gentleman, is never at a loss for company in London ; 
 and this is the way the latter passes his time. He rises late, 
 puts on a frock, and, leaving his sword at home, takes his cane, 
 and goes where he pleases. The park is commonly the place 
 where he walks, because 'tis the Exchange for men of quality. 
 'Tis the same thing as the Tuileries at Paris, only the park has a 
 certain beauty of simplicity which can not be described. The 
 grand walk is called the Mall ; ig full of people at every hour of 
 the day, but especially at morning and evening, when their 
 Majesties often walk with the royal family, who are attended 
 only by half a dozen yeomen of the guard, and permit all per- 
 sons to walk at the same time with them. The ladies and 
 gentlemen always appear in rich dresses ; for the English, who, 
 twenty years ago, did not wear gold lace but in their army, are 
 now embroidered and bedaubed as much as the French, I speak 
 of persons of quahty ; for the citizen stUl contents himself with 
 a suit of fine cloth, a good hat and wig, and fine hnen. Every 
 body is well clothed here, and even the beggars don't make so 
 ragged an appearance as they do elsewhere." After our friend, 
 the man of quality, has had his morning or undress walk in the 
 Mall, he goes home to dress, and then saunters to some coffee- 
 house or chocolate-house, frequented by the persons he would 
 see. " For 'tis a rule with the Enghsh to go once a day, at least, 
 to houses of tliis sort, where they talk of business and news, 
 read the papers, and often look at one another without opening 
 their Ups. And 'tis very well they are so mute : for were they 
 all as talkative as people of other nations, the coffee-houses would 
 
 2
 
 26 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 be intolerable, and there would be no hearing what one man 
 said where they are so many. The chocolate -house in St. 
 James's Street, where I go every morning to pass away the 
 time, is always so full that a man can scarce turn about in it." 
 
 Delightful as London city was, King George I. liked to be out 
 of it as much as ever he could ; and when there, passed all Ms 
 time with his Germans. It was with them as with Blucher, one 
 hundred years afterward, when the bold old reiter looked down 
 from St. Paul's, and sighed out, " Was fiir Plunder !" The Ger- 
 man women plundered ; the German secretaries plundered ; the 
 German cooks and intendants plundered ; even Mustapha and 
 Mahomet, the German negi-oes, had a share of the booty. Take 
 what you can get, was the old monarch's maxim. 'He was not 
 a lofty monarch, certainly : he was not a patron of the fine arts : 
 but he was not a hypocrite, he Avas not revengeful, he was not 
 extravagant. Though a despot in Hanover, he was a moderate 
 ruler in England. His aim was to leave it to itself as much as 
 possible, and to hve out of it as much as he could. His heart 
 was in Hanover. When taken ill on liis last journey, as he was 
 passing through Holland, he thrust his hvid head out of the 
 coach-window, and gasped out, ^ Osnaburg, 0?naburg !" He was 
 more than fifty years of age when he came among us : we took 
 him because we wanted him, because he served our turn ; we 
 laughed at his uncouth German ways, and sneered at him. He 
 took our loyalty for what it was worth ; laid hands on what 
 money he could ; kept us assuredly from Popery and wooden 
 shoes. I, for one, would have been on his side in those days. 
 Cynical and selfish as he was, he was better than a king out of 
 St. Germains, with the French King's orders in his poeket, and 
 a swarm of Jesuits in his train. 
 
 The Fates are supposed to interest themselves about royal 
 personages ; and so this one had omens and prophecies specially 
 regarding him. He was said to be much disturbed at a prophecy 
 that he should die very soon after his wife ; and, sure enough, 
 pallid Death, having seized upon the luckless princess in her 
 castle of Ahlden, presently pounced upon H.M. King George I., 
 in his traveling chariot, on the Hanover road. What postillion 
 can outride that pale horseman ? It is said George promised 
 one of his left-handed widows to come to her after death, if leave 
 were granted to liim to revisit the glimpses of the moon ; and
 
 GEOKGE THE FIRST. 27 
 
 soon after his demise a great raven actually flying or hopping in 
 at the Duchess of Kendal's window at Twickenham, she chose 
 to imagine the King's spirit inhabited these plumes, and took 
 special care of her sable visitor. Affecting metempsychosis — 
 funereal royal bird ! How pathetic is the idea of the Duchess 
 weeping over it! When this chaste addition to our English 
 aristocracy died, all her jewels, her plate, her plunder, went over 
 to her relations in Hanover. I wonder whether her heirs took 
 the bird, and whether it is still flapping its wings over Herreu- 
 hausen ? 
 
 The days are over in England of that strange religion of king- 
 worship, when priests flattered princes in the Temple of God ; 
 when servility was held to be ennobling duty ; when beauty 
 and youth tried eagerly for rOyal favor ; and woman's shame 
 was held to be no dishonor. Mended morals and mended man- 
 ners, in courts and people, are among the priceless consequences 
 of the freedom which George I. came to rescue and secure. He 
 kept his compact with his English subjects ; and, if he escaped 
 no more than other men and monarchs from the vices of his 
 age, at least we may thank him for preserving and transmit- 
 ting the liberties of ours. In our free air royal and humble 
 homes have alike been purified ; and Truth, the birth-right of 
 high and low among us, which quite fearlessly judges our great- 
 est personages, can only speak of them now in words of respect 
 and regard.
 
 GEORGE THE SECOND. 
 
 ON the afternoon of the 14th of June, 1727, two horsemen 
 might have been perceived galloping along the road from 
 Chelsea to Richmond. The foremost, cased in the jack -boots of 
 the period, was a broad-faced, jolly-looking, and very corpulent 
 cavalier ; but, by the manner in wliich he urged his horse, you 
 might see that he was a bold as well as a skillful rider. Indeed, 
 no man loved sport better ; and in the hunting fields of Norfolk 
 no squire rode more boldly after the fox, or cheered Ringwood 
 and Sweettips more lustily than he who now tliundered over the 
 Richmond road. 
 
 He speedily reached Richmond Lodge, and asked to see the 
 OAvner of the mansion. The mistress of the house and her ladies, 
 to whom our friend was admitted, said he could not be intro- 
 duced to the master, however pressing the business might be. 
 The master was asleep after his dinner ; he always slept after 
 his dinner : and woe be to the person who interrupted him ! 
 Nevertheless, our stout friend of the jack -boots put the affrighted 
 ladies aside, opened the forbidden door of the bedroom, wherein 
 upon the bed lay a little gentleman ; and here the eager messen- 
 ger knelt down in his jack-boots. 
 
 He on the bed started up, and with many oaths and a strong 
 German accent asked who was there, and who dared to disturb 
 him ? 
 
 " I am Sir Robert Walpole," said the messenger. The awak- 
 ened sleeper hated Sir Robert Walpole. " I have the honor to 
 announce to your Majesty that your royal father. King George 
 I., died at Osnaburg on Saturday last, the 10th instant." • 
 
 " Dat is one hig lie f" roared out his sacred Majesty King 
 George II. ; but Sir Robert Walpole stated the fact, and from
 
 GEOKGE THE SECOND, 29 
 
 that clay until three-and-thirty years after, George, the second 
 of tlie name, ruled over England. 
 
 How the king made away with his fiither's will under the 
 astonished nose of the Archbishop of Canterbury ; how he was 
 a choleric little sovereign ; how he shook his fist in the face of 
 his father's courtiers ; how he kicked his coat and his wig about 
 in his rages, and called everybody thief, liar, rascal, with whom 
 he differed — you will read in all the history books ; and how he 
 speedily and shrewdly reconciled himself with the bold minister, 
 whom he had hated during his father's life, and by whom he was 
 served during fifteen years of his own with admirable prudence, 
 fidelity, and success. But for Sir Robert Walpole, we should 
 have had the Pretender back again. But for his obstinate love 
 of peace, we should have had wars, which the nation was not 
 strong enough nor united enough to endure. But for his reso- 
 lute counsels and good-humored resistance, we might have had 
 German despots attempting a Hanoverian regimen over us : we 
 should have had revolt, commotion, want, and tyrannous mis- 
 rule, in place of a quarter of a century of peace, freedom, and 
 material prosperity, such as the country never enjoyed, until 
 that corrupter of parhaments, that dissolute, tipsy cynic, that 
 courageous lover of peace and liberty, that great citizen, patriot, 
 and statesman governed it. In religion he was little better than 
 a heathen ; cracked ribald jokes at bigwigs and bishops, and 
 laughed at High Church and Low. In private life the old pagan 
 reveled in the lowest pleasures ; he passed his Sundays tippling 
 at Richmond ; and Iris holydays bawling after dogs, or boozing 
 at Houghton with boors over beef and punch. He cared for 
 letters no more than his master did : he judged human nature so 
 meanly that one is ashamed to have to own that he was right, 
 and that men could be corrupted by means so base. But, with 
 his hireling House of Commons, he defended liberty for us ; with 
 his incredulity he kept Church-craft down. There were parsons 
 at Oxford as double-deaUng and dangerous as any priests out of 
 Rome, and he routed them both. He gave Englishmen no con- 
 quests, but he gave them fleace, and ease, and freedom ; the three 
 per cents, nearly at par; and wheat at five and six-and-twenty 
 shillings a quarter. 
 
 It was lucky for us that our first Georges were not more high- 
 minded men; especially fortunate that they loved Hanover so
 
 30 THE FOUR .GEORGES. 
 
 much as to leave England to have her own way. Our chief 
 troubles began when we got a king who gloried in the name of 
 Briton, and, being born in the country, proposed to rule it. He 
 was no more fit to govern England than his grandfather and 
 great-grandfather, who did not try. It was righting itself during 
 their occupation. The dangerous, noble old spirit of cavalier 
 loyalty was dying out ; the stately old English High Church was 
 emptying itself; the questions dropping, which, on one side and 
 the other — the side of loyalty, prerogative, church, and king ; 
 the side of right, truth, civil and religious freedom — had set gen- 
 erations of brave men in arms. By the time when George III. 
 came to the throne, the combat between loyalty and hberty was 
 come to an end ; and Charles Edward, old, tipsy, and childless, 
 was dying in Italy. 
 
 Those who are curious about European Court history of the 
 last age know the memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth, and 
 what a court was that of Berlin, where G-eorge II.'s cousins ruled 
 sovereign. Frederick the Great's father knocked down his sons, 
 daughters, officers of state ; he kidnapped big men all Europe 
 over to make grenadiers of; his feasts, his parades. Ins wine par- 
 ties, his tobacco parties, are all described. Jonathan Wild the 
 Great in language, pleasures, and behavior, is scarcely more deli- 
 cate than this German sovereign. Louis XV., his life, and reign, 
 and doings, are told in a thousand French memoirs. Our George 
 II., at least, was not a worse king than his neighbors. He 
 claimed and took the royal exemption from doing right which 
 sovereigns assumed. A dull httle man of low tastes he appears 
 to us in England ; yet Hervey tells us that this choleric prince 
 was a great sentimentalist, and that his letters — of which he 
 wrote prodigious quantities — were quite dangerous in their 
 powers of fascination. He kept his sentimentalities for his Ger- 
 mans and his queen. With us Enghsh he never chose to be 
 familiar. He has been accused of avarice, yet he did not give 
 much money, and did not leave much behind him. He did not 
 love the fine arts, but he did not pretend to love them. He was 
 no more a hypocrite about religion tnan his father. He judged 
 men by a low standard ; yet, with such men as were near him, 
 was he wrong in judging as he did? He readily detected lying 
 and flattery, and liars and flatterers were perforce his compan- 
 ions. Had he been more of a dupe, he might have been more
 
 GEORGE THE SECOXD. 31 
 
 amiable. A dismal experience made liim cynical. No boon was 
 it to him to be clear-sighted, and see only selfishness and flattery 
 round about him. What could Walpole tell him about his Lords 
 and Commons, but that they were all venal ? Did not his clergy, 
 his courtiers, bring him the same story ? Dealing with men and 
 women in his rude, skeptical way, he comes to doubt about 
 honor, male and female, about patriotism, about religion. "He 
 is wild, but he fights like a man," George I., the taciturn, said of 
 his son and successor. Courage George II. certainly had. The 
 Electoral Prince, at the head of his father's contingent, had 
 approved himself a good and brave soldier under Eugene and 
 Marlborough. At Oudenarde he specially distinguished himself. 
 At Malplaquet the other claimant to the English throne won but 
 little honor. There was always a question about James's courage. 
 Neither then in Flanders, nor afterward in his own ancient king- 
 dom of Scotland, did the luckless Pretender show much resolution. 
 But dapper little George had a famous tough spirit of his own, 
 and fought like a Trojan. He called out his brother of Prussia, 
 with sword and pistol ; and I wish, for the interest of romancers 
 in general, that that famous duel could have taken place. The 
 two sovereigns hated each other with all their might ; their 
 seconds were appointed ; the place of meeting was settled ; and 
 the duel was only prevented by strong representations made to 
 the two, of the European laughter Avhich would have been 
 caused by such a transaction. 
 
 Whenever we hear of dapper George at war, it is certain that 
 he demeaned himself like a little man of valor. At Dettingen 
 his horse ran away with him, and with difficulty was stopped 
 from carrying him into the enemy's lines. The king, dismount- 
 ing from the fiery quadruped, said bravely : " Now I know I 
 shall not run away ;" and placed himself at the head of the foot, 
 drew his sword, brandishing it at the whole of the French army, 
 and calling out to his own men to come on, in bad English, but 
 with the most famous pluck and spirit. In '45, when the Pre- 
 tender was at Derby, and many people began to look pale, the 
 king never lost his courage — not he. " Pooh ! don't talk to me 
 that stuflP!" he said, like a gallant little prince as he was, and 
 never for one moment allowed his equanimity, or his business, or 
 his pleasures, or his travels to be disturbed. On public festivals 
 he always appeared in the hat and coat he wore on the famous
 
 32 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 day of Oudenarde ; and the people laughed, but kindly, at the 
 odd old garment, for bravery never goes out of fashion. 
 
 In private life the prince showed himself a worthy descendant 
 of his father. In this respect, so much has been said about the 
 first George's manners, that we need not enter into a description 
 of the son's German harem. In 1705 he married a princess 
 remarkable for beauty, for cleverness, for learning, for good tem- 
 per — one of the truest and fondest wives ever prince was blessed 
 with, and who loved him and was faithful to him, and he, in his 
 coarse fashion, loved her to the last. It must be told to the 
 honor of Caroline of Anspach, that, at the time when German 
 princes thought no more of changing their religion than you of 
 altering your cap, she refused to give up Protestantism for the 
 other creed, although an Archduke, afterward to be an Emperor, 
 was offered to her for a bridegroom. Her Protestant relations 
 in Berlin were angry at her rebellious spirit ; it was they who 
 tried to convert her (it is droll to think that Frederick the Great, 
 who had no religion at all, was known for a long time in England 
 as the Protestant hero), and these good Protestants set upon 
 Caroline a certain Father Urban, a very skillful Jesuit, and famous 
 winner of souls. But she routed" the Jesuit ; and she refused 
 Charles VI. ; and she married the Uttle Electoral Prince of Han- 
 over, whom she tended with love, and with every manner of 
 sacrifice, with artful kindness, with tender flattery, with entire 
 self-devotion, thenceforward until her life's end. 
 
 When George I. made his first visit to Hanover, his son was 
 appointed regent during the royal absence. But this honor was 
 never again conferred on the Prince of Wales ; he and his father 
 fell out presently. On the occasion of the christening of his 
 second son, a royal row took place, and the prince, shaking his 
 fist in the Duke of Newcastle's face, called him a rogue, and 
 provoked his august father. He and his wife were turned out 
 of St. James's, and their princely children taken from them, by 
 order of the royal head of the family. Father and mother wept 
 piteously at parting from their httle ones. The young ones sent 
 some cherries, with their love, to papa and mamma ; the parents 
 watered the fruit with tears. They had no tears thirty-five years 
 afterward, when Prince Frederick died — their eldest son, their 
 heir, their enemy. 
 
 The king called his daughter-in-law " cette diahlesse madame
 
 GEOKGE THE SECOND. 33 
 
 la princesse." The frequenters of the latter's court were forbid- 
 den to appear at the king's : their royal highnesses going to 
 Bath, we read how the courtiers followed them thither, and paid 
 that homage in Somersetshire which was forbidden in London. 
 That phrase of '^cette diablesse madame la princesse^ explains one 
 cause of the wrath of her royal papa. She was a very clever 
 woman : she had a keen sense of humor : she had a dreadful 
 tongue : she turned into ridicule the antiquated sultan and his 
 hideous harem. She wrote savage letters about him home to 
 members of her family. So, driven out from the royal presence, 
 the prince and princess set up for themselves in Leicester Fields, 
 " where," says Walpole, " the most promising of the young gen- 
 tlemen of the next party, and the prettiest and liveUest of the 
 young ladies, formed the new court." Besides Leicester House, 
 they had their lodge at Richmond, frequented by some of the 
 pleasantest company of those days. There were the Herveys, 
 and Chesterfield, and little Mr. Pope from Twickenham, and with 
 him, sometimes, the savage Dean of St. Patrick's, and quite a 
 bevy of young ladies, whose pretty foces smile on us out of his- 
 tory. There Avas Lepell, famous in ballad song ; and the saucy, 
 charming Mary Bellenden, who would have none of the Prince 
 of Wales's fine comphments, who folded her arms across her 
 breast, and bade H.R.H. keep off; and knocked his purse of 
 guineas into his face, and told him she was tired of seeing him 
 count them. He was not an august monarch, this Augustus. 
 Walpole tells us how, one night at the royal card-table, the play- 
 ful princesses pulled a chair away from under Lady Deloraine, 
 who, in revenge, pulled the king's from under him, so that his 
 Majesty fell on the carpet. In whatever posture one sees this 
 royal George, he is ludicrous somehow ; even at Dettingen, 
 where he fought so bravely, his figure is absurd — calling out in 
 his broken English, and lunging with his rapier, like a fencing- 
 master. In contemporary caricatures, Gleorge's son, " the Hero of 
 Culloden," is also made an object of considerable fun, as witness 
 the following picture of him defeated by the French (1757) at 
 Hastenbeck : 
 
 I refrain to quote from Walpole regarding G-eorge — for those 
 charming volumes are in the hands of all who love the gossip of 
 the last century. Nothing can be more cheery than Horace's 
 letters. Fiddles sing all through them: wax-lights, fine dresses, 
 
 2*
 
 34 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 fine jokes, fine plate, fine equipages, glitter and sparkle there: 
 never was such a brilliant, jigging, smirking Vanity Fair as that 
 through which he leads us. Hervey, the nest great authority, is 
 a darker spirit. About him there is something fi-ightful : a few 
 years since his heirs opened the lid of the Tckworth box ; it was 
 as if a Pompeii was opened to us — the last century dug up, with 
 its temples and its games, its chariots, its public places — lupan- 
 aria. Wandering through that city of the dead, that dreadfully 
 selfish time, through those godless intrigues and feasts, through 
 those crowds, pushing, and eager, and struggling — rouged, and 
 lying, and fawning — I have Avanted some one to be friends with. 
 I have said to friends conversant with that history, " Show me 
 some good person about that court ; find me, among those selfish 
 courtiers, those dissolute, gay people, some one being that I can 
 love and regard. There is that strutting little sultan, George II. ; 
 there is that hunchbacked, beetle-browed Lord Chesterfield ; 
 there is John Hervey, with his deadly smile, and ghastly, painted 
 face — I hate them. There is Hoadly, cringing from one bishop- 
 ric to another ; yonder comes little Mr. Pope, from Twickenham, 
 with his friend, the Irish dean, iu his new cassock, bowing too, 
 but with rage flashing from under his bushy eye-brows, and scorn 
 and hate quivering in his smile. Can you be fond of these ? 
 Of Pope I might : at least I might love his genius, his wit, his 
 greatness, his sensibility — with a certain conviction that at some 
 fancied slight, some sneer which he imagined, he would turn 
 upon me and stab me. Can you trust the queen ? She is not 
 of our order : their very position makes kings and queens lonely. 
 One inscrutable attachment that inscrutable woman has. To 
 that she is faithful, through all trial, neglect, pain, and time. 
 Save her husband, she really cares for no created being. She is 
 good enough to her children, and even fond enough of them : but 
 she would chop them all up into little pieces to please him. In 
 her intercourse with all around her, she was perfectly kind, 
 gracious, and natural : but friends may die, daughters may de- 
 part, she will be as perfectly kind and gracious to the next set. 
 If the king wants her, she will smile upon him, be she ever so 
 sad ; and walk with him, be she ever so weary ; and laugh at 
 his brutal jokes, be she in ever so much pain of body or heart. 
 Caroline's devotion to her husband is a prodigy to read of. 
 Wliat charm had the little man? What was there iu those
 
 GEORGE THE SECOXD. 35 
 
 •wonderful letters of tliirtj^ pages long, which he wrote to her 
 when he was absent, and to his mistresses at Hanover, when he 
 was in London with his wife ? Why did Caroline, the most 
 lovely and accomplished princess of Germany, take a little red- 
 faced staring princeling for a husband, and refuse an emperor? 
 Why, to her last hour, did she love him so ? -She killed herself 
 because she loved him so. She had the gout, and would plunge 
 her feet in cold water in order to walk with him. With the film 
 of death over her eyes, writhing in intolerable pain, she yet had 
 a livid smile and a gentle word for her master. You have read 
 the wonderful history of that death-bed? How she bade him 
 marry again, and the reply the old king blubbered out, " Non, 
 non : faurai des viaitresses." There never was such a ghastly 
 farce. I watch the astonishing scene — I stand by that awful 
 bedside, wondering at the ways in which G-od has ordained the 
 lives, loves, rewards, successes, passions, actions, ends of His crea- 
 tures — and can't but laugh, in the presence of death, and with 
 the saddest heart. In that often-quoted passage from Lord Her- 
 vey, in which the queen's death-bed is described, the grotesque 
 horror of the details surpasses all satire : the dreadful humor of 
 the scene is more terrible than Swift's blackest pages, or Field- 
 ing's fiercest irony. The man who wrote the story had some- 
 thing diabolical about him : the terrible verses which Pope wrote 
 respecting Hervey, in one of his own moods of almost fiendish 
 malignity, I fear are true. I am frightened as I look back into 
 the past, and fancy I behold that ghastly, beautiful face ; as I 
 think of the queen writhing on her death-bed, and crying out, 
 " Pray 1 — pray !" — of the royal old sinner by her side, who kisses 
 her dead lips with frantic grief, and leaves her to sin more ; of 
 the bevy of courtly clergymen, and the archbishop, whose prayers 
 she rejects, and who are obliged, for propriety's sake, to shuffle 
 off the anxious inquiries of the public, and vow that her Majesty 
 quitted this fife "in a heavenly frame of mind." What a life !— 
 to what ends devoted ! What a vanity of vanities 1 It is a 
 theme for another pulpit than the lecturer's. Far a pqlpit ?— I 
 think the part which pulpits play in tlie deaths o,f kiqgs is the 
 most ghastly of all the ceremonial; the lying eulogies, the 
 blinking of disagreeable truthSj the sickening flatteries, the simu- 
 lated grief, the falaelioqds ai^d sycophancies all uttered in the 
 name of Heaven in our State churches : these monstrous threno-
 
 36 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 dies have been sung from time immemorial over kings and 
 queens, good, bad, vpicked, licentious. The State parson must 
 bring out his commonplaces ; his apparatus of rhetorical black- 
 hangings. Dead king or live king, the clergyman must flatter 
 him — announce his piety while living, and when dead, perform 
 the obsequies of " our most religious and gracious king." 
 
 I read that Lady Yarmouth (my most religious and gracious 
 king's favorite) sold a bishopric to a clergyman for five thousand 
 pounds. (She betted him five thousand pounds that he would 
 not be made a bishop, and he lost, and paid her.) Was he the 
 only prelate of his time led up by such hands for consecration ? 
 As I peep into George II.'s St. James's I see crowds of cassocks 
 rustling up the back-stairs of the ladies of the court ; stealthy 
 clergy slipping purses into their laps ; that godless old king yawn- 
 ing under his canopy in his Chapel Royal, as the chaplain before 
 him is discoursing. Discoursing about what ? — about righteous- 
 ness and judgment ? Wliile the chaplain is preaching the king 
 is chattering in German almost as loud as the preacher ; so loud 
 that the clergyman — it may be one Dr. Young, he who wrote 
 " Night Thoughts," and discoursed on the splendors of the stars, 
 the glories of Heaven, and utter vanities of this world — actually 
 burst out crying in his pulpit because the defender of the faith 
 and dispenser of bishoprics would not listen to him I No won- 
 der that the clergy were corrupt and indifierent amidst this 
 indifference and corruption. No wonder that skeptics multiplied 
 and morals degenerated, so far as they depended on the influ- 
 ence of such a king. No wonder that Whitfield cried out in the 
 wilderness that Wesley quitted the insulted temple to pray on 
 the hill-side. 1 look with reverence on those men at that time. 
 Which is the sublimer spectacle — the good John Wesley, sur- 
 rounded by his congregation of miners at the pit's mouth, or 
 the queen's chaplains mumbling through their morning oflfice in 
 their ante-room, under the picture of the great Venus, with the 
 door opened into the adjoining chamber, where the queen is 
 dressing, talking scandal to Lord Hervey, on uttering sneers at 
 Lady Suffolk, who is kneeling with the basin at her mistress's 
 side ? I say I am scared as I look round at this society — at this 
 king, at these courtiers, at these politicians, at these bishops — at 
 this flaunting vice and levity. Whereabouts in this court is the 
 honest man ? Where is the pure person one may like ? The
 
 GEORGE THE SECOND. 37 
 
 air stifles one with its sickly perfumes. There are some old- 
 world follies and some absurd ceremonials about our court of the 
 present day, which I laugh at, but as an Englishman, contrasting 
 it with the past, shall I not acknowledge the change of to-day ? 
 As the mistress of St. James's passes me now I salute the sove- 
 reign, wise, moderate, exemplary of life ; the good mother ; the 
 good wife; the accomplished lady; the enhghtened friend of 
 art ; the tender sympathizer in her people's glories and sorrows. 
 
 Of all the court of George and Caroline I find no one but 
 Lady Suffolk with whom it seems pleasant and kindly to hold 
 converse. Even the misogynist Croker, who edited her letters, 
 loves her, and has that regard for her with which her sweet 
 graciousness seems to have inspired almost all men and some 
 women who came near her. I have noted many little traits 
 which go to prove the charms of her character (it is not merely 
 because she is charming, but because she is characteristic, that I 
 allude to her). She writes delightfully sober letters. Address- 
 ing Mr. Gay at Tunbridge (he was, you know, a poet, penniless 
 and in disgrace), she says : " The place you are in has strangely 
 filled your head with physicians and cures ; but, take my word 
 for it, many a fine lady has gone there to drink the waters with- 
 out being sick ; and many a man has complained of the loss of 
 his heart, who had it in his own possession. I desire you will 
 keep yours ; for I shall not be very fond of a friend without one, 
 and I have a great mind you should be in the number of 
 mine." 
 
 When Lord Peterborough was seventy years old, that indomi- 
 table youth addressed some flaming love, or rather gallantry, let- 
 ters to Mrs. Howard — curious relics they are of the romantic 
 manner of wooing sometimes in use in those days. It is not 
 passion ; it is not love ; it is gallantry : a mixture of earnest and 
 acting ; high-flown compliments, profound bows, vows, sighs, and 
 ogles, in the manner of the Clelie romances, and Millamont and 
 Doricourt in the comedy. There was a vast elaboration of cere- 
 monies and etiquette, of raptures— a regulated form for kneeling 
 and wooing which has quite passed out of our downright man- 
 ners. Henrietta Howard accepted the noble old earl's philander- 
 ing ; answered the c[ueer love-letters with due acknowledgment ; 
 made a profound courtesy to Peterborough's profound bow ; and 
 got John Gay to help her in the composition of her letters in
 
 38 TUE FOUR GEOEGES. 
 
 reply to Iier old knight. He wrote her charming verses, in 
 which there was truth as well as grace. " Oh, wonderful crea- 
 ture !" he writes : 
 
 " wonderful creature, a woman of reason ! 
 Never grave out of pride, never gay out of season 1 
 When so easy to guess who this angel should be, 
 Who would think Mrs. Howard ne'er dreamt it was she ?" 
 
 The great Mr. Pope also celebrated her in lines not less pleasant, 
 and painted a portrait of what must certainly have been a 
 delightful lady : 
 
 " I know a thing th.at's most uncommon — 
 
 Envy, be silent and attend! — 
 I know a reasonable woman, 
 Handsome, yet witty, and a friend : 
 
 "Not w.arp'd by passion, aw'd by rumor. 
 
 Not grave through pride, or gay through folly : 
 An equal mixture of good humor 
 And exquisite soft melancholy. 
 
 "Has she no faults, then (Envy says), sir? 
 
 Yes, she has one, I must aver — 
 When all the world conspires to praise her, 
 The woman's deaf, and does not hear !" 
 
 Even the women concurred in praising and loving her. The 
 Duchess of Queensberry bears testimony to her amiable qualities 
 and writes to her : " I tell you so and so, because you love chil- 
 dren, and to have children love you." The beautiful, jolly Mary 
 Bellenden, represented by contemporaries as " the most perfect 
 creature ever known," writes very pleasantly to her " dear How- 
 ard," her " dear Swiss," from the country, whither Mary had 
 retired after her marriage, and when she gave up being a maid 
 of honor. " How do you do, Mrs. Howard ?" Mary breaks 
 out. " How do you do, Mrs. Howard ? that is all I have to say. 
 This afternoon I am taken with a fit of writing ; but as to ma,t- 
 ter, I have nothing better to entertain you than news of my 
 farm. I therefore give you the following list of the stock of eat- 
 ables timt I am fatting for my private tooth. It is well known 
 to the whole county of Kent that I have four fat calves, two fat 
 hogs, fit for killing, twelve promising black pigs, two young 
 chickens, three fine geese, with thirteen eggs under each (seve- 
 ral being duck-eggs, else the others do not come to maturity) •
 
 GEORGE THE SE€0^'X». 39 
 
 • 
 
 all this, with rabbits, and pigeons, and carp in plenty, beef and 
 mutton at reasonable rates. Now, Howard, if you have a mind 
 to stick a knife into any thing I have named, say so !" 
 
 A jolly set must they have been those maids of honor. Pope 
 introduces us to a whole bevy of them in a pleasant letter. " I 
 went," he says, " by water to Hampton Court, and met the 
 Prince, with all his ladies, on horseback, coming from hunting, 
 Mrs. Bellenden and Mrs. Lepell took me into protection, con- 
 trary to the laws against harboring papists, and gave me a din- 
 ner, with something I liked better, an opportunity of conversa- 
 tion with Mrs. Howard. We all agreed that the life of a maid 
 of honor was of all things the most miserable, and wished that 
 all women who envied it had a specimen of it. To eat West- 
 phalia ham of a morning, ride over hedges and ditches on bor- 
 rowed hacks, come home in the heat of the day with a fever, 
 and (what is worse a hundred times) with a red mark on the 
 forehead from an uneasy hat — all this may qualify them to make 
 excellent wives for hunters. As soon as they Avipe off the heat 
 of the day, they must simper an hour and catch cold in the 
 princess's apartment ; from thence to dinner with what appetite 
 they may ; and after that till midnight, work, walk, or think 
 which way they please. No lone house in Wales, with a moun- 
 tain and rookery, is more contemplative than this Court. Miss 
 Lepell walked with me three or four hours by moonlight, and 
 we met no creature of any quality but the king, Avho gave 
 audience to the vice-chamberlain all alone under the garden 
 wall." 
 
 I fancy it was a merrier England, that of our ancestors, than 
 the island which v/e inhabit. People high and low amused 
 themselves very much more. I have calculated the manner in 
 which statesmen and persons of condition passed their time — 
 and what with drinking, and dining, and supping, and cards, 
 wonder how Ihey got through their business at all. They played 
 all sorts of games, which, with the exception of cricket and ten- 
 nis, have quite gone out of our manners now. In the old prints 
 of St. James's Park, you still see the marks along the walk, to 
 note the balls when the court played at Mall. Fancy Birdcage 
 Walk now so laid out, and Lord John and Lord Palmerston 
 knocking balls up and down the avenue I Most of those jolly 
 sports belong to tlie past, and the good old games of England
 
 40 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 are only to be found in old novels, in old ballads, or the columns 
 of dingy old newspapers, which say how a main of cocks is to 
 be fought at Winchester between the Winchester men and the 
 Hampton men ; or how the Cornwall men and the Devon men 
 are going to hold a great wrestling-match at Totness, and so on. 
 
 A hundred and twenty years ago tliere Avere not only country 
 towns in England, but people who inliabited them. We were 
 very much more gregarious ; we were amused by very simple 
 pleasures. Every town had its fair, every village its wake. The 
 old poets have sung a hundred jolly ditties about great cudgel- 
 playings, famous grinning through horse-collars, great Maypole 
 meetings, and morris-dances. The girls used to run races clad 
 in very light attire ; and the kind gentry and the good parsons 
 thought no shame in looking on. Dancing bears went about the 
 country Avith pipe and tabor. Certain well-known tunes were 
 sung all over the land for hundreds of years, and high and low 
 rejoiced in that simple music. Gentlemen who wished to enter- 
 tain their female friends constantly sent for a band. When Beau 
 Fielding, a mighty fine gentleman, was courting the lady whom 
 he married, he treated her and her companion at his lodgings to 
 a supper from the tavern, and after supper they sent out for a 
 fiddler — three of them. Fancy the three, in a great wainscoted 
 room, in Covent Garden or Soho, lighted by two or three candles 
 in silver sconces, some grapes and a bottle of Florence wine on 
 the table, and the honest fiddler playing old tunes in quaint old 
 minor keys, as the Beau takes out one lady after the other, and 
 solemnly dances with her I 
 
 The very great folks, young noblemen, with their governors, 
 and the like, went abroad and made the grand tour ; the home 
 satirists jeered at the Frenchified and Italian ways which thej 
 brought back ; but the greater number of people never left the 
 country. The jolly squire ofte*i had never been twenty miles 
 from home. Those who did go went to the baths, to Harrogate, 
 or Scarborough, or Bath, or Epsom. Old letters are full of these 
 places of pleasure. Gay writes to us about the fiddlers at Tun- 
 bridge ; of the ladies having merry little private balls among 
 themselves ; and the gentlemen entertaining them by turns with 
 tea or music. One of the young beauties whom he met did not 
 care for tea : " We have a young lady here," he says, " that is 
 very particular in her desires. I have known some young ladies
 
 GEORGE THE SECOND. 41 
 
 who, if ever they prayed, would ask for some equipage or title, 
 a husband or matadores ; but this lady, who is but seventeen, 
 and has thirty thousand pounds to her fortune, places all her 
 wishes on a pot of good ale. When her friends, for the sake of 
 her shape and complexion, would dissuade her from it, she 
 answers, with the truest sincerity, that by the loss of shape and 
 complexion she could only lose a husband, whereas ale is her 
 passion." 
 
 Every country town had its assembly-room — moldy old tene- 
 ments, which we may still see in deserted inn-yards, in decayed 
 provincial cities, out of which the great wen of London has 
 sucked all the life. York, at assize times, and throughout the 
 winter, harbored a large society of northern gentry. Shrews- 
 bury was celebrated for its festivities. At Newmai'ket I read ot 
 " a vast deal of good company, besides rogues and blacklegs ;" 
 at Norwich, of two assembhes, with a prodigious crowd in the 
 hall, the rooms, and the gallery. In Cheshire (it is a maid of 
 honor of Queen Caroline who writes, and who is longing to be 
 back at Hampton Court and the fun there) I peep into a country 
 house, and see a very merry party : " We meet in the work- 
 room before nine, eat and break a joke or two till twelve, then 
 we repair to our own chambers and make ourselves ready, for it 
 can not be called dressing. At noon the great bell fetches us 
 into a parlor, adorned with all sorts of fine arms, poisoned darts, 
 several pair of old boots and shoes worn by men of might, with 
 the stirrups of King Charles I., taken from him at Edgehill " — 
 and there they have their dinner, after which comes dancing and 
 supper. 
 
 As for Bath, all history went and bathed and drank there. 
 George II. and his Queen, Prince Frederick and his Court, scarce 
 a character one can mention in the early last century, but was 
 seen in that famous Pump-room where Beau Nash presided, and 
 his picture hung between the busts of Newton and Pope : 
 
 " This picture, placed these busts between, 
 Gives satire all its strength ; 
 Wisdom and Wit are little seen, 
 But Folly at full length." 
 
 I should like to have seen the Folly. It was a splendid, em- 
 broidered, beruffled, snuff-boxed, red-heeled, impertinent Folly, 
 and knew how to make itself respected, I should like to have
 
 42 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 seen that noble old madcap Peterborough in his boots (lie actu- 
 tiially had the audacity to walk about Bath in boots !), with his 
 blue ribbon and stars, and a cabbage under each arm, and a 
 chicken in his hand, which he had been cheapening for his din- 
 ner. ChesterJield came there many a time and gambled for 
 hundreds, and gi-inned through his gout. Mary Wortley was 
 there, young and beautiful ; and Mary Wortley, old, hideous, 
 and snuffy. Miss Chudleigh came there, slipping away from one 
 husband and on the look-out for another. Walpole passed many 
 a day there ; sickly, supercilious, absurdly dandified, and affected ; 
 with a brilliant wit, a delightful sensibility; and, for his friends, 
 a most tender, generous, and faithful heart. And if you and I 
 had been alive then, and strolling down Milsom Street — hush I 
 we should have taken our hats off, as an awful, long, lean, gaunt 
 figure, swathed in flannels, passed by in its chair, and a livid 
 face looked out from the window — great fierce eyes staring from 
 under a bushy, powdered wig, a terrible frown, a terrible Roman 
 nose — and we whisper to one another, " There he is ! There's 
 the great commoner ! There is Mr. Pitt I" As we walk away, 
 the abbey bells are set a-ringing ; and we meet our testy friend 
 Toby Smollett, on the arm of James Quin the actor, who tells us 
 that the bells ring for Mr. Bullock, an eminent cow-keeper from 
 Tottenham, who has just arrived to drink the waters ; and Toby 
 shakes his cane at the door of Colonel Ringworm — the Creole 
 gentleman's lodgings next to his own — where the Colonel's two 
 negroes are practicing on the French-horn. 
 
 When we try to recall social England, we must fancy it play- 
 ing at cards for many hours every day. The custom is well- 
 nigh gone out among us now, but fifty years ago was general, 
 fifty years before that almost universal, in the country. "Gam- 
 ing has become so much the fashion," writes Seymour, the author 
 of the Court Gamester, " that he who in company should be 
 ignorant of the games in vogue would be reckoned low-bred, 
 and hardly fit for conversation." There were Ciirds everywhere. 
 It was considered ill-bred to read in company. " Books were 
 not fit articles for drawing-rooms," old ladies used to say.- People 
 were jealous, as it were, and angry Avith them. You will find 
 in Hervey that George II. was always furious at the sight of 
 books, and his queen, who loved reading, had to practice it in 
 secret in her closet. But cards were the resource of all the
 
 GEORGE THE SECOND. 4'3 
 
 world. Every night, for hours, kings and queens of England 
 sat down and handled their majesties of spades and diamonds. . 
 In European Courts, I believe the practice still remains — not for 
 gambling, but for pastime. Our ancestors generally adopted it. 
 " Books ! prithee, don't talk to me about books," said old Sarah 
 Marlborough. " The only books I know are men and cards." 
 " Dear old Sir Roger de Cove-'ley sent all his tenants a string of 
 hogs' puddings and a pack of cards at Christmas," says the Sj^ec- 
 taior, wishing to depict a kind landlord. One of the good old 
 lady writers in whose letters I have been dipping, cries out, 
 " Sure, cards have kept us women from a great deal of scan- 
 dal !" Wise old Johnson regretted that he had not learned to 
 play. " It is very useful in life," he says; "it generates kind- 
 ness and consolidates society." David Hume never went to bed 
 without his whist. We have Walpole, in one of his letters, in a 
 transport of gi-atitude for the cards. " I shall build an altar to 
 Pam," says he, in his pleasant, dandified way, " for the escape 
 of my charming Duchess of Grafton." The duchess had been 
 playing cards at Rome when she ought to have been at a car- 
 dinal's concert, where the floor fell in, and all the monsignors 
 were precipitated into the cellar. Even the Nonconformist 
 clergy looked not unkindly on the practice. " I do not think," 
 says one of them, " that honest Martin Luther committed sin by 
 playing at backgammon for an hour or two after dinner, in 
 order, by unbending his mind, to promote digestion." As for 
 the High Church parsons, they all played, bishops and all. On 
 Twelfth-day the Court used to play in state. " This being 
 Twelfth-day, his ^lajesty, the Prince of Wales, and the Knights 
 Companions of the Garter, Thistle, and Bath appeared in the 
 collars of their respective orders. Their Majesties, the Prince 
 of Wales, and three eldest Princesses, went to the Chapel Royal, 
 preceded by the heralds. The Duke of Manchester carried the 
 sword of State. The king and prince made offering at the altar 
 of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, according to the annual cus- 
 tom. At night their Majesties played at hazard with the nobU- 
 ity, for the benefit of the groom-porter ; and 'twas said the king 
 won six hundred guineas ; the queen, three hundred and sixty ; 
 Princess Amelia, twenty ; Princess Carohne, ten; the Duke of 
 Grafton and the Earl of Portmore, several thousand.'?." 
 
 Let us glance at the same chronicle, which is of the year 1731,
 
 44 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 and see how others of our forefathers were engaged. " Cork, 
 15th January. — This day, one Tim Croneen was, for the murder 
 and robbery of Mr. St. Leger and his wife, sentenced to be 
 hanged two minutes, then his head to be cut off, and his body 
 divided in four quarters, to be placed in four cross-ways. He 
 was servant to Mr. St. Leger, and committed the murder with 
 the privity of the servant-maid, who was sentenced to be burned ; 
 also of the gardener, whom he knocked on the head, to deprive 
 him of his share of the booty." 
 
 " January 3. — A post-boy was shot by an Irish gentleman on 
 the road near Stone, in Staffordshire, who died in two days, for 
 which the gentleman was imprisoned." 
 
 " A poor man was found hanging in a gentleman's stables, at 
 Bungay, in Norfolk, by a person who cut him down, and running 
 for assistance, left his penknife behind him. The poor man, recov- 
 ering, cut his throat with the knife ; and a river being nigh, 
 jumped into it; but company coming, he was dragged out alive, 
 and was hke to remain so." 
 
 " The Honorable Thomas Finch, brother to the Earl of Not- 
 tingham, is appointed embassador at the Hague, in the room of 
 the Earl of Chesterfield, who is on his return home." 
 
 " William Cowper, Esq., and the Rev. Mr. John Cowper, chap- 
 lain in ordinary to her Majesty, and rector of Great Berkhamp- 
 stead, in the county of Hertford, are appointed clerks of the 
 commissioners of bankruptcy." 
 
 " Charles Creagh, Esq., and Macnamara, Esq., between 
 
 whom an old grudge of three years had subsisted, which had oc- 
 casioned their being bound over about fifty times for breaking 
 the peace, meeting in company with Mr. Eyres, of Galloway, 
 they discharged their pistols, and all three were killed on the 
 spot — to the great joy of their peaceful neighbors, say the Irish 
 papers." 
 
 " Wheat is twenty-six shiUings to twenty-eight shillings, and 
 barley, twenty shillings to twenty-two shillings a quarter ; three 
 per cents., ninety-two ; best loaf sugar, nine and a quarter pence ; 
 Bohea, twelve shillings, to fourteen shillings; Pekoe, eighteen 
 shillings, and Hyson, thirty-five shillings, per pound." 
 
 " At Exon was celebrated, with great magnificence, the birth- 
 day of the son of Sir W. Courtney, Bart., at which more than 
 one thousand persons were present. A bullock was roasted
 
 GEORGE THE SECOND. 45 
 
 whole ; a butt of wine and several tuns of beer and cider were 
 given to the populace. At the same time Sir William delivered 
 to his son, then of age, Powdram Castle, and a great estate." 
 
 " Charlesworth and Cox, two soUcitors, convicted of forgery, 
 stood on the pillory at the Royal Exchange. The first Avas 
 severely handled by the populace, but the other was very much 
 favored, and protected by six or seven fellows, who got on the 
 pillory to protect him from the insults of the mob." 
 
 " A boy killed by falling upon iron spikes, from a lamp-post, 
 which he climbed to see Mother Needham stand in the pillory." 
 
 " Mary Lynn was burned to ashes at the stake, for being con- 
 cerned in the murder of her mistress." 
 
 " Alexander Ru-ssell, the foot-soldier, who was capitally con- 
 victed for a street robbery in January sessions, was reprieved for 
 transportation ; but having an estate fallen to him, obtained a 
 free pardon." 
 
 " The Lord John Russell married to the Lady Diana Spencer, 
 at Marlborough House. He has a fortune of thirty-thousand 
 pounds down, and is to have one hundred thousand pounds at 
 the death of the Duchess Dowager of Marlborough, his grand- 
 mother." 
 
 " March 1 being the anniversary of the Queen's birthday, when 
 her Majesty entered the forty-ninth year of her age, there was a 
 splendid appearance of nobility at St. James's. Her Majesty 
 was magnificently dressed, and wore a flowered muslin head- 
 edging, as did also her Royal Highness. The Lord Portmore 
 was said to have had the richest dress; though an Italian count 
 had twenty-four diamonds instead of buttons." 
 
 New clothes on the birth-day were the fashion for all loyal 
 people. Swift mentions the custom several times. Walpole 
 is constantly speaking of it; laughing at the practice, but 
 having the very finest clothes from Paris, nevertheless. If the 
 king and queen were unpopular, there were very few new 
 clothes at the drawing-room. In a paper in the True Patriot, No. 
 3, written to attack the Pretender, the Scotch, French, and Pop- 
 ery, Fielding supposes the Scotch and the Pretender in possession 
 of London, and himself about to be hanged for loyalty — when, 
 j-ust as the rope is round his neck, he says: "My little girl 
 entered my bedchamber, and put an end to my dream by pulling 
 open my eyes, and telling me that the tailor had just brought
 
 46 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 home my clothes for his Majesty's birthday." In his " Temple 
 Beau," the beau is dunned " for a birthday suit of velvet, forty 
 pounds." Be sure that Mr. Harry Fielding was dunned too. 
 
 The public days, no doubt, were splendid, but the private 
 Court life must have been awfully wearisome. " I will not 
 trouble you," writes Hervey to Lady Sundon, " with any account 
 of our occupations at Hampton Court. No mill-horse ever went 
 in a more constant track, or a more unchanging circle; so that by 
 the assistance of an almanac for the day of the week, and a watch 
 for the hour of the day, you may inform yourself fully, without 
 any other intelligence but your memory, of every transaction 
 within the verge of the Court. Walking, chaises, levies, and 
 audiences fill up the morning. At night the king plays at com- 
 merce and backgammon, and the queen at quadrille, where poor 
 Lady Charlotte runs her usual nightly gauntlet, the queen pulling 
 her hood, and the Princess Eoyal rapping her knuckles. The 
 Duke of G-rafton takes his nightly opiate of lottery, and sleeps 
 as usual between the Princesses Amelia and Caroline. Lord 
 Grantham strolls from one room to another (as Dryden saj's), 
 like some discontented ghost that oft appears, and is forbid to 
 speak; and stirs himself about as people stir a fire, not with any 
 design, but in hopes to make it burn brisker. At last the king 
 gets up ; the pool finishes ; and every body has their dismission. 
 Their Majesties retire to Lady Charlotte and my Lord Lifford ; 
 my Lord Grrantham to Lady Frances and Mr. Clark ; some to 
 supper, some to bed ; and thus the evening and the morning 
 make the day." 
 
 The king's fondness for Hanover occasioned all sorts of rough 
 jokes among his English subjects, to whom smier-kraut and sau- 
 sages have ever been ridiculous objects. When our present 
 Prince Consort came among us, the people bawled out songs in 
 the streets indicative of the absurdity of Germany in general. 
 The sausage-shops produced enormous sausages, which we might 
 suppose were the daily food and delight of German princes. I 
 remember the caricatures at the marriage of Prince Leopold with 
 the Princess Charlotte. The bridegroom was drawn in rags. George 
 III.'s wife was called by the people a beggarly German duchess ; 
 the British idea being that all princes were beggarly except 
 British princes. King George paid us back. He thought there 
 were no manners out of Germany. Sarah Marlborough once
 
 GEO'RGE THE SECOND. 47 
 
 coming to visit the princess, while her Royal Highness was whip- 
 ping one of the roaring royal children, " Ah," says George, who 
 was standing by, " you have no good manners in England, 
 because you are not properly brought up when you are young." 
 He insisted thst no English cooks could roast, no English coach- 
 man could drive : he actually questioned the superiority of our 
 nobility, our horses, and our roast beef I 
 
 While he was away from his beloved Hanover, every thing 
 remained there exactly as in the prince's presence. There were 
 eight hundred horses in the stables, there Avas all the apparatus 
 of chamberlains, court-marshals, and equerries; and court assem- 
 blies where held every Saturday, where all the nobility of Han- 
 over assembled at what I can't but think a fine and touching 
 ceremony. A large arm-chair was placed in the assembly-room, 
 and on it the king's portrait. The nobility advanced, and made 
 a bow to the arm-chair, and to the image which Nebuchad- 
 nezzar the king had set up ; and spoke under their voices before 
 the august picture, just as they would have done had the King 
 Churfiirst been present himself. 
 
 He was always going back to Hanover. In the year 1729 he 
 went for two whole years, during which Caroline reigned for 
 him in England, and he was not in the least missed by his Brit- 
 ish subjects- He went again in '35 and '36 ; and between the 
 years 1740 and 1755 was no less than eight times on the Conti- 
 nent, which amusement he was obliged to give up at the outbreak 
 of the Seven Years' War. Here every day's amusement was 
 the same. "Our life is as uniform as that of a monastery," writes 
 a courtier whom Vehse quotes. " Every morning at eleven, and 
 every evening at six, we drive in the heat to Herrenhausen, 
 through an enormous linden avenue, and twice a day cover our 
 ooats and coaches with dust. In the king's society there is never 
 the least change. At table, and at cards, he sees always the same 
 faces, and at the end of the game retires into his chamber. Twice 
 a week there is a French theater ; the other days there is play in 
 the gallery. In this way, were the king always to stop at Han- 
 over, one could make a ten years' calendar of his proceedings ; 
 and settle beforehand what his time of business, meals, and 
 pleasure would be." 
 
 The old pagan kept his promise to his dying wife. Lady Yar- 
 mouth was now in full favor, and treated with profound respect
 
 48 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 by the Hanover society, though it appears rather neglected in 
 England when she caine among us. In 1740 a couple of the 
 king's daughters went to see him at Hanover — Anna, the Prin- 
 cess of Orange (about whom, and whose husband and marriage- 
 day, Walpole and Hervey have left us the most ludicrous de - 
 scriptions), and Maria of Hesse Cassel, with their respective 
 lords. This made the Hanover court very brilliant. In honor 
 of his high guests, the king gave several fetes ; among others, a 
 magnificent masked ball, in the green theater at Herrenhausen — 
 the garden theater, with linden and box for screen, and grass for 
 a carpet, where the Platens had danced to George and his father, 
 the late sultan. The stage and a great part of the garden were 
 illuminated with colored lamps. Almost the whole court appeared 
 in white dominoes, "like,'" says the describer of the scene, "like 
 spirits in the Elysian fields. At night, supper was served in the 
 gallery with three great tables, and the king was very merry. 
 After supper dancing Avas resumed, and I did not get home till 
 five o'clock by full daylight to Hanover. Some days afterward 
 we had in the opera-house at Hanover a great assembly. The 
 king appeared in a Turkish dress ; his turban was ornamented 
 with a magnificent agraffe of diamonds ; the Lady Yarmouth 
 was di-essed as a sultana ; nobody was more beautilul than the 
 Princess of Hesse." So, while poor Caroline was resting in her 
 coffin, dapper little George, with his red face and his white eye- 
 brows and goggle-eyes, at sixty years of age, is dancing a pretty 
 dance with Madame Walmoden, and capering about dressed up 
 like a Turk ! For twenty years more that Utile old Bajazet went 
 on in this Turkish fashion, until the fit came which choked the 
 old man, when he ordered the side of his coffin to be taken out, 
 as well as that of poor Caroline's, who had preceded him, so that 
 his sinful old bones and ashes might mingle with those of the 
 faithful creature. Oh, strutting Turkej^-cock of Herrenhausen I 
 Oh, naughty little Mohammed I in what Turkish paradise are you 
 now, and where be your painted houris? So Countess Yar- 
 mouth appeared as a sultana, and his Majesty in a Turkish dress 
 wore an agraffe of diamonds, and was very merry, was he ? 
 Friends ! he was your fathers' king as well as mine — let us drop 
 a respectful tear over his grave. 
 
 He said of Ins wife that he never knew a woman who was 
 Avorthy to buckle her shoe : he would sit alone weeping before
 
 GEORGE THE SECOND. 49 
 
 her portrait, and, Avhen he had dried his eyes, he would go off 
 to liis Wahiioden and talk of her. On the 25th day of October, 
 17G0, he being tlien in the seventy-seventh year of his age, and 
 the tlurty-fourth of his reign, his page went to take him his 
 royal chocolate, and behold ! the most religious and gracious ' 
 king was Ij'ing dead on the floor. They went and fetched 
 Walmoden ; but Walmoden could not wake him. The sacred 
 Majesty was but a lifeless corpse. The king was dead ; Grod 
 save the king ! But, of course, poets and clergymen decorously 
 bewailed the late one. Here are some artless verses, in which 
 an English divine deplored the famous departed hero, and over 
 which you may cry or you may laugh, exactly as your humor 
 suits : 
 
 " While at his feet expiring Faction lay, 
 No contest left but who should best obey ; 
 Saw in his ofi'spiing all himself renewed ; 
 The same fair path of glory still pursued ; 
 Ssiw to young George Augusta's care impart 
 AVhate'er could raise and humanize the heart; 
 Blend all his gr.mdsire's virtues with his own. 
 And form their mingled radiance for the throne — ■ 
 Jso farther blessing could on earth be given — 
 The next degree of happiness was — heaven I" 
 
 If he had been good, if he had been just, if he had been pure 
 in life, and wise in council, could the poet have said much more ? 
 It was a i)arson who came and wept over this grave, with Wal- 
 moden sitting on it, and claimed heaven for the poor old man 
 slumbering below. Here was one who had neither dignity, 
 learning, morals, nor wit — who tainted a great society by a bad 
 example ; who m youth, manhood, old age, was gross, low, and 
 sensual ; and Mr. Porteus, afterward my Lord Bishop Porteus, 
 says the earth was not good enough for him, and that his only 
 place was heaven ! Bravo, Mr. Porteus ! The divine who wept 
 these tears over George the Second's memory wore George the • 
 Third's lawn. I don't know whether people still admire his 
 poetry or his sermons.
 
 GEORfiE THE THIRD. 
 
 W 
 
 "E have to glance over sixty years in as many minutes. To 
 read the mere catalogue of characters who figured during 
 that long l^eriod would occupy our allotted time, and we should 
 have all text and no sermon. England has to undergo the revolt 
 of the American colonies ; to submit to defeat and separation ; 
 to shake under the volcano of the French Eevolution ; to grapple 
 and fight for the hfe with her gigantic enemy Napoleon ; to gasp 
 and rally after that tremendous struggle. The old society, with 
 its courtly splendors, has to pass away ; generations of statesmen 
 to rise and disappear ; Pitt to follow Chatham to the tomb ; the 
 memory of Rodney and Wolfe to be superseded by Nelson's 
 and Wellington's glory ; the old poets who unite us to Queen 
 Anne's time to sink into their graves ; Johnson to die, and Scott 
 and Byron to arise; Garrick to delight the world with his daz- 
 zling dramatic genius, and Kean to leap on the stage and take 
 possession of the astonished theater. Steam has to be invented ; 
 kings to be beheaded, banished, deposed, restored ; Napoleon to 
 be but an episode, and George III. is to be alive through all 
 these varied changes, to accompany his people through all these 
 revolutions of thought, government, society ; to survive out of 
 the old world into ours. 
 
 When I first saw England she was in mourning for the young 
 Princess Charlotte, the hope of the empire. I came from India 
 as a child, and our ship touched at an island on the way home, 
 where my black servant took me a long walk over rocks and 
 hills until we reached a garden where we saw a man walking. 
 " That is he," said the black man : " that is Bonaparte. He eats 
 tln-ee sheep every day, and all the httle children he can lay 
 hands on !" There were people in the British dominions besides
 
 GEORGE THE THIRD. 51 
 
 that poor Calcutta serving-man with an equal horror of the Cor- 
 sican ogre. 
 
 With the same childish attendant I remember peeping through 
 the colonnade at Carlton House, and seeing the abode of the 
 great Prince Eegent. 1 can see yet the Guards pacing before 
 the gates of the place. The place ? What place ? The palace 
 exists no more than the palace of Nebuchadnezzar. It is but a 
 name now. Where be the sentries who used to salute as the 
 Eoyal chariots drove in and out ? The chariots, with the kings 
 inside, have driven to the realms of Pluto ; the tall Guards have 
 marched into darkness, and the echoes of their drums are rolling 
 in Hades. Where the palace once stood a hundred little chil- 
 dren are paddling up and down the steps to St. James's Pai-k. 
 A score of grave gentlemen are taking their tea at the Athenteum 
 Club ; as many grisly warriors are garrisoning the United Ser- 
 vice Club opposite. Pall Mall is the great social Exchange of 
 London now — the mart of news, of politics, of scandal, of rumor 
 — the English forum, so to speak, where men discuss the last 
 dispatch from the Crimea, the last speech of Lord Derby, the 
 next move of Lord John. And, now and then, to a few anti- 
 quarians, whose thoughts are with the past rather than with the 
 present, it is a memorial of old time sand old people, and Pall 
 Mall is our Palmyra. Look! About this spot Tom of Te» 
 Thousand was killed by Konigsmarck's gang. In that great red 
 house Gainsborough lived, and Culloden Cumberland, George 
 III.'s uncle. Yonder is Sarah Marlborough's palace, just as it 
 stood when that termagant occupied it. At 25 Walter Scott 
 used to live ; at the house now No. ?9, and occupied by the 
 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 
 resided Mrs. Eleanor Gwynn, comedian. How often has Queen 
 Caroline's Chair issued from under yonder arch I All the men 
 of the Georges have passed up and down the street. It has 
 seen Walpole's chariot and Chatham's sedan; and Fox, Gibbon, 
 Sheridan, on their way to Brookes's; and stately William Pitt 
 stalking on the arm of Dundas ; and Hanger and Tom Sheridan 
 reeling out of Raggett's ; and Byron limping into Wattier's ; and 
 Swift striding out of Bury Street; and Mr. Addison and Dick 
 Steele, both perhaps a little the better for liquor ; and the Prince 
 of Wales and the Duke of York clattering over the pavement ; 
 and Johnson counting the posts along the streets, after dawdliug
 
 62 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 before Dodsley's window : and Horry Walpole hobbling into his 
 carriage, with a gimcrack just bought out at Christie's; and 
 George Selwyn sauntering into "White's. 
 
 In the published letters to George Selwyn we get a mass of 
 correspondence by no means so brilliant and witty as Walpole's, 
 or so bitter and bright as Hervey's, but as interesting, and even 
 more descriptive of the time, because the letters are the work of 
 many hands. You hear more voices speaking, as it were, and 
 more natural than Horace's dandified treble, and Sporus's malig- 
 nant whisper. As one reads the Selwyn letters — as one looks 
 at Reynolds's noble pictures illustrative of those magnificent 
 times and voluptuous people — one almost hears the voice of the 
 dead past ; the laughter and the chorus ; the toast called over 
 the brimming cups ; the shout at the race-course or the gaming- 
 table ; the merry joke frankly spoken to the laughing fine lady. 
 How fine those ladies were, those ladies who heard and spoke 
 such coarse jokes! how grand those gentlemen! 
 
 I fancy that peculiar product of the past, the fine gentleman, 
 has almost vanished off the face of the earth, and is disappearing 
 like the beaver or the Red Indian. We can't have fine gentle- 
 men any more, because we can't have the society in which they 
 lived. The peojjle will not obey ; the parasites will not be as 
 obsequious as formerly : children do not go down on their knees 
 to beg their parents' blessing: chaplains do not say grace and 
 retire before the pudding : servants do not say your honor and 
 your worship at every moment : tradesmen do not stand hat in 
 hand as the gentleman passes : authors do not wait for hours in 
 gentlemen's ante-rooms with a fulsome dedication, for wliich 
 they hope to get five guineas from his lordship. In the days 
 when there Were fine gentlemen, Mr. Secretary Pitt's under- 
 secretaries did not dare to sit down before him ; but Mr. Pitt, in 
 his turn, went down on liis gouty knees to George II. ; and 
 when George III. spoke a few kind words to him, Lord Chatham 
 burst into tears of reverential joy and gratitude; so awful was 
 the idea of the monarch, and so great the distinctions of rank. 
 Fancy Lord John Russel or Lord Palmerston on their knees 
 while the Sovereign was reading a dispatch, or beginning to cry 
 because Prince Albert said something civil ! 
 
 At the accession of George III. the patricians were yet at the 
 height of their good fortune. Society recognized their superior-
 
 GEORGE THE THIRD. 53 
 
 ity, which they themselves pretty calmly took for granted. They 
 inherited not only titles and estates, and seats in the House of 
 Peers, but seats in the House of Commons. There were a mul- 
 titude of Grovernment places, and not merely these, but bribes 
 of actual five hundred pound notes, which members of the House 
 took not much shame in assuming. Fox went into Parliament 
 at twenty : Pitt was just of age : his father not much older. It 
 was the good time for patricians. Small blame to them if they 
 took and enjoyed, and over-enjoyed, the prizes of politics, the 
 pleasures of social life. 
 
 In these letters to Selwyn we are made acquainted with a 
 whole society of these defunct fine gentlemen : and can watch 
 with a curious interest a life, which the novel-writers of that 
 time, I think, have scarce touched upon. To Smollet, to Field- 
 ing even, a lord was a lord : a gorgeous being with a blue rib- 
 bon, a coroneted chair, and an immense star on his bosom, to 
 whom commoners paid reverence. Richardson, a man of hum- 
 bler birth than either of the above two, owned that he was igno- 
 rant regarding the manners of the aristocracy, and besought Mrs. 
 Donnellan, a lady who had lived in the great world, to examine 
 a volume of Sir Charles Grandison, and point out any errors 
 which she might see in this particular. Mrs. Donnellan found 
 so many faults that Richardson changed color, shut up the book, 
 and muttered that it were best to throw it in the fire. Here, in 
 Selwyn, we have the real original men and women of fashion 
 of the early time of G-eorge III. We can follow them to the 
 new club at Almack's : we can travel over Europe with them : 
 we can accompany them not only to the public places, but to 
 their country-houses and private society. Here is a whole com- 
 pany of them ; wits and prodigals ; some persevering in their 
 bad ways; some repentant, but relapsing; beautiful ladies, para- 
 sites, humble chaplains, led captains. Tliose fair creatures whom 
 we love in Reynolds's portraits, and who still look out on us 
 from his canvases with their sweet calm faces and gracious smiles 
 — those fine gentlemen who did us the honor to govern us ; who 
 inherited their boroughs, took their ease in their patent places, 
 and slipped Lord North's bribes so elegantly under their ruffles 
 — we make acquaintance with a hundred of these fine folks, hear 
 their talk and laughter, read of their loves, quarrels, intrigues, 
 debts, duels, divorces ; can fancy them alive if we read the book
 
 64 THE FOUR GEOKGES. 
 
 long enough. "We can attend at Duke Hamilton's wedding, and 
 behold him marry his bride with the curtain-ring : we can peep 
 into her poor sister's death-bed : we can see Charles Fox cursing 
 over the cards, or March bawling out the odds at ISJewmarket: 
 we can imagine Burgoyne tripping off from St. James's Street to 
 conquer the Americans, and slinking back into the club some- 
 what crest-fallen after his beating : we can see the young king 
 dressing himself for the drawing-room and asking ten thousand 
 questions regarding all the gentlemen : we can have high life or 
 low, the struggle at the Opera to behold the Violetta or the 
 Zamperini — the Macaronies and fine ladies in their chairs troop- 
 ing to the masquerade or Madame Cornelys's — the crowd at 
 Drury Lane to look at the body of Miss Ray, whom Parson 
 Hackman has just pistoled — or we can peep into Newgate, where 
 poor Mr. Rice, the forger, is waiting his fate and his supper. 
 " You need not be particular about the sauce for his fowl," says 
 one turnkey to another : " for you know he is to be hanged in 
 the morning." "Yes," rephes the second janitor, "but the 
 chaplain sups with him, and he is a terrible fellow for melted 
 butter !" 
 
 Selwyn has a chaplain and parasite, one Dr. Warner, than 
 whom Plautus, or Ben Jonson, or Hogarth never painted a bet- 
 ter character. In letter after letter he adds fresh strokes to the 
 portrait of himself, and completes a portrait not a Httle curious 
 to look at now that the man has passed away ; all the foul pleas- 
 ures and gambols in which he reveled, played out; all the rouged 
 faces into which he leered, worms and skulls; all the fine gentle- 
 men whose shoe-buckles he kissed, laid in their coffins. This 
 worthy clergyman takes care to tell us that he does not believe 
 in his religion, though, thank Heaven, he is not so great a rogue 
 as a lawyer. He goes on Mr. Selwyn's errands, any errands, 
 and is proud, he says, to be that gentleman's proveditor. He 
 waits upon the Duke of Queensberry — old Q. — and exchanges 
 pretty stories with that aristocrat. He comes home " after a 
 hard day's christening," as he says, and writes to his patron be- 
 fore sitting down to whist and partridges for supper. He revels 
 in the thoughts of ox-cheek and Burgundy — he is a boisterous, 
 uproarious parasite, licks his master's shoes with explosions of 
 laughter and cunning smack and gusto, and Ukes the taste of 
 that blacking as much as the best claret in old Q.'s cellar. He
 
 GEORGE THE THIED. 55 
 
 has Rabelais and Horace at his greasy fingers' ends. He is in- 
 expressibly mean, curiously jolly ; kindly and good-natured in 
 secret — a tender-hearted knave, not a venomous lickspittle. 
 Jesse says, that at his cliapel m Long Acre, " he attained a con- 
 siderable popularity by the pleasing, manly, and eloquent style 
 of his delivery." Was infidelity endemic, and corruption in the 
 air ? Around a young king, himself of the most exemplary life 
 and undoubted piety, lived a court society as dissolute as our 
 country ever knew. George II.'s bad morals bore their fruit in 
 George III.'s early years ; as I believe that a knowledge of that 
 good man's example, his moderation, his frugal simplicity, and 
 God-fearing life, tended infinitely to improve the morals of the 
 country and purify the whole nation. 
 
 After Warner, the most interesting of Selwyn's correspond- 
 ents is the Earl of Carlisle, grandfather of the amiable nobleman 
 at present Viceroy in Ireland. The grandfather, too, was Irish 
 Viceroy, having previously been treasurer of the king's house- 
 hold ; and, in 1778, the principal commissioner for treating, con- 
 sulting, and agreeing upon the means of quieting the divisions 
 subsisting in his majesty's colonies, plantations, and possessions 
 in North America. You may read his lordship's manifestoes in 
 the Royal New York Gazette. He returned to England, having 
 by no means quieted the colonies ; and speedily afterward the 
 Royal New York Gazette somehow ceased to be published. 
 
 This good, clever, kind, highly-bred Lord Carlisle was one of 
 the English fine gentlemen who was well nigh ruined by the 
 awful debauchery and extravagance which prevailed in the great 
 English society of those days. Its dissoluteness was awful : it 
 had swarmed over Europe after the Peace ; it had danced, and 
 raced, and gambled in all the courts. It had made its bow at 
 Versailles; it had run its horses on the plain of Sablons, near 
 Paris, and created the Anglo-mania there : it had exported vast 
 quantities of pictures and marbles from Rome and Florence : it 
 had ruined itself by building great galleries and palaces for the 
 reception of the statues and pictures : it had brought over sing- 
 ing-women and dancing-women from all the operas of Europe, 
 on whom my lords lavished their thousands, while they left their 
 honest wives and honest children languishing in the lonely, de- 
 serted splendors of the castle and park at home. 
 
 Besides the great Loudon society of those days, there was
 
 56 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 another unacknowledged world, extravagant beyond measure, 
 tearing about in the pursuit of pleasure; dancing, gambling, 
 drinking, singuig ; meeting the real society in the public places 
 (at Eanelaghs, Vauxhalls, and Ridottos, about which our old 
 novelists talk so constantly), and outvying the real leaders of 
 fashion in luxury, and splendor, and beauty. For instance, 
 when the famous Miss Gunning visited Paris as Lady Coven- 
 try, where she expected that her beauty would meet with the 
 applause which had followed her and her sister through England, 
 it appears she was put to flight by an English lady still more 
 lovely m the eyes of the Parisians. A certain Mrs. Pitt took a 
 box at the opera opposite the countess ; and was so much hand- 
 somer than her ladyship, that the parterre cried out that this 
 was the real English angel, whereupon Lady Coventry quitted 
 Paris in a huff. The poor thing died presently of consumption, 
 accelerated, it was said, by the red and white paint with which 
 she plastered those luckless charms of hers. (We must repre- 
 sent to ourselves all fashionable female Europe, at that time, as 
 plastered with white, and raddled with red.) She left two 
 daughters behind her, whom George Selwyn loved (he was 
 curiously fond of little children), and who are described very 
 droUy and pathetically in these letters, in their httle nursery, 
 where passionate little Lady Fanny, if she had not good cards, 
 flung hers into Lady Mary's face ; and where they sat conspiring 
 how they should receive a new mother-in-law whom their papa 
 presently brought home. They got on very well with their 
 mother-in-law, who was very kind to them ; and they grew up, 
 and they were married, and they were both divorced afterward 
 — poor little souls ! Poor painted mother, poor society, ghastly 
 in its pleasures, its loves, its revelries ! 
 
 As for my lord commissioner, we can afford to speak about 
 him ; because, though he was a wild and weak commissioner at 
 one time, though he hurt his estate, though he gambled and lost 
 ten thousand pounds at a sitting — " five times more," says the 
 unlucky gentlfeman, " than I ever lost before ;" though he swore 
 he never would touch a card again ; and yet, strange to say, 
 went back to the table and lost still more : yet he repented of 
 his errors, sobered down, and became a worthy peer and a good 
 country gentleman, and returned to the good wife and the good 
 children whom he had always loved with the best part of his
 
 GEORfiE THK THIKD. 57 
 
 heart. He bail married at one-and-twenty. He found himself, 
 in the midst of a dissolute society, at the head of a great fortune. 
 Forced into luxury, and obliged to be a great lord and a great 
 idler, he yielded to some temptations, and paid for them a bitter 
 penalty of manly remorse ; from some others he fled "wisely, and 
 ended by conquering them nobly. But he always had the 
 good wife and children in his mind, and they saved him. " I 
 am very glad you did not come to me the morning I left Lon- 
 don," he writes to G. Sehvyn, as he is embarking for America. 
 "I can only say, I never knew till that moment of parting what 
 grief was." There is no parting now, where they are. The 
 faithful wife, the kind, generous gentleman, have left a noble 
 race behind them : an inheritor of his name and titles, who is 
 beloved as widely as he is known ; a man most kind, accom- 
 pUshed, gentle, friendly, and pure ; and female descendants occu- 
 pying high stations and embellishing great names ; some 
 renowned for beauty, and all for spotless lives, and pious, 
 matronly virtues. 
 
 Another of Selwyn's correspondents is the Earl of March, 
 afterward Duke of Queensberry, whose life lasted into this cen- 
 tury ; and who certainly as earl or duke, young man or gray- 
 beard, was not an ornament to any possible society. The 
 legends about old Q. are awful. In Selwyn, in Wraxall, and 
 contemporary chroniclers, the observer of human nature may fol- 
 low him, drinking, gambling, intriguing to the end of his career ; 
 when the wrinkled, palsied, toothless old Don Juan died, as 
 wicked and unrepentant as he had been at the hottest season of 
 youth and passion. There is a house in Piccadilly where they 
 used to show a certain low window at which old Q. sat to his 
 very last days, ogling through his senile glasses the women as 
 they passed by. 
 
 There must have been a great deal of good about this lazy, 
 sleepy George Selwyn, which, no doubt, is set to his present 
 credit. " Your friendship," writes CarUsle to him, " is so differ- 
 ent from any thing I have ever met witli or seen in the world, 
 that when I recollect the extraordinary proofs of your kindness, 
 it seems to me Uke a dream." " I have lost my oldest friend 
 and acquaintance, G. Selwyn," writes Walpole to Miss Berry : 
 "I really loved him, not only for his infinite wit, but for a tliou- 
 sand good qualities." I am glad, for my part, that such a lover 
 
 .3*
 
 58 The FotrR aTSORGES. 
 
 of cakes and ale should have had a thousand good qualities — that 
 he should have been friendly, generous, warm-hearted, trust- 
 worthy. " I rise at six," writes Carlisle to him, from Spa (a 
 great resort of fashionable people in our ancestors' days), " play 
 at cricket till dinner, and dance in the evening till I can scarcely 
 crawl to bed at eleven. There is a life for you I You get up 
 at nine ; play with Raton your dog till twelve, in your dressing- 
 gown ; then creep down to White's ; are five hours at table ; 
 sleep till supper-time; and then make two wretches carry you 
 in a sedan-chair, with three pints of claret in you, three miles for 
 a shilling." Occasionally, instead of sleeping at White's, George 
 went down and snoozed in the House of Commons by the side 
 of Lord North. He represented G-loucester for many years, and 
 had a borough of his own, Ludgershall, for which, Avhen he was 
 too lazy to contest G-loucester, he sat himself. " I have given 
 directions for the election of Ludgershall to be of Lord Melbourne 
 and myself," he writes to the Premier, whose friend he was, and 
 who was himself as sleepy, as witty, and as good-natured as 
 George. 
 
 If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank 
 and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and 
 criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men's foilings, 
 and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and volup- 
 tuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal's natural taste for 
 pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What 
 could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great for- 
 tune, do but be splendid and idle ? In these letters of Lord 
 Carlisle's from which I have been quoting, there is many a just 
 complaint made by the kind-hearted young nobleman of the state 
 which he is obliged to keep ; the magnificence in which he must' 
 live ; the idleness to which his position as a peer of England 
 bound him. Better for him had he been a lawyer at his desk, or 
 a clerk in his office ; a thousand times better chance for happi- 
 ness, education, employment, security from temptation. A few 
 years since the profession of arms was the only one which our 
 nobles could follow. The church, the bar, medicine, literature, 
 the arts, commerce, were below them. It is to the middle class 
 we must look for the safety of England : the working educated 
 men, away from Lord North's bribery in the senate ; the good 
 clergy not corrupted into parasites by hopes of preferment ; the
 
 GEORGE THE TUIRD. 59 
 
 tradesmen rising into manly opulence ; the painters pursuing 
 their gentle calling ; the men of letters in their quiet studies ; 
 these are the men whom we love and like to read of in the last 
 age. How small the grandees and the men of pleasure look 
 beside them ! how contemptible the story of the George III. 
 court squabbles are beside the recorded talk of dear old John- 
 son ! What is the grandest entertainment at Windsor, compared 
 to a night at the club over its modest cups, with Percy, and 
 Langton, and Goldsmith, and poor Bozzy at the table? I declare 
 I think, of all the polite men of that- age, Joshua Reynolds was 
 the finest gentleman. And they were good, as well as witty and 
 wise, those dear old friends of the past. Their minds were not 
 debauched by excess, or effeminate with luxury. They toiled 
 their noble day's labor : they rested, and took their kindly plea- 
 sure : they cheered their hoUday meetings with generous wit 
 and hearty interchange of thought : they were no prudes, but 
 no blush need follow their conversation : they were merry, but 
 no riot came out of their cups. Ah ! I would have liked a night 
 at the Turk's Head, even though bad news had arrived from the 
 colonies, and Dr. Johnson was growling against the rebels ; to 
 have sat with him and Goldy ; and to have heard Burke, the 
 finest talker in the world ; and to have had Garrick flashing in 
 with a story from his theater ! — I like, I say, to think of that 
 society ; and not merely how pleasant and how wise, but how 
 good they were. I think it was on going home one night from 
 the club that Edmund Burke — his noble soul full of great 
 thoughts, be sure, for they never left him ; his heart full of gen- 
 tleness — was accosted by a poor wandering woman, to whom he 
 spoke words of kindness ; and, moved by the tears of this Mag- 
 dalen, perhaps having caused them by the good words he spoke 
 to her, he took her home to the house of his wife and children, 
 and never left her until he had found the means of restoring her 
 to honesty and labor. Oh, you fine gentlemen I you Marches, 
 and Selvvyns, and Chesterfields, how small you look by the side 
 of these "-reat men 1 Good-natured Carlisle plays at cricket all 
 day, and dances in the evening " till he can scarcely crawl," 
 gayly contrasting his superior virtue with George Selwyn's, 
 " carried to bed by two wretches at midnight with three pints of 
 claret in him." Do you remember the verses — the sacred verses 
 — which Johnson wrote on the death of his humble fi'iend, Levett?
 
 60 THE FOUR GEOEGES. 
 
 "Well tried through many a varying year. 
 See Levett to the grave descend ; 
 Officious, innocent, sincere, 
 Of every friendless name the friend. 
 
 "In misery's darkest cavern known, 
 His useful care was ever nigh. 
 Where hopeless anguish poured the groan, 
 And lonely want retired to die. 
 
 "No summons mocked by chill delay. 
 No petty gain disdained by pride. 
 The modest wants of every day 
 The toil of every day supplied. 
 
 " His virtues walked their narrow round. 
 Nor made a pause, nor left a void : 
 And sure the Eternal Master found 
 His single talent well employed." 
 
 Whose name looks the brightest now, that of Queensberry, the 
 wealthy duke, or Selwyn, the wit, or Levett, the poor phy- 
 sician ? 
 
 I hold old Johnson (and shall we not pardon James Boswell 
 some errors for embalming him for us ?) to be the great sup- 
 porter of the British monarchy and church during the last age — 
 better than whole benches of bishops, better than Pitts, Norths, 
 and the great Burke himself. Johnson had the ear of the na- 
 tion : liis immense authority reconciled it to loyalty, and shamed 
 it out of irreligion. When George III. talked with him, and 
 the people heard the great author's good opinion of the sove- 
 reign, whole generations rallied to the king. Johnson was 
 revered as a sort of oracle ; and the oracle declared for church 
 and king. What a humanity the old man had ! He was a 
 kindly partaker of all honest jjleasures : a fierce foe to all sin, 
 but a gentle enemy to all sinners. " What, boys, are you for a 
 frolic ?" he cries, when Topham Beauclerc comes and wakes him 
 up at midnight : " I'm with you." And away he goes, tumbles 
 on his homely old clothes, and trundles through Covent Garden 
 with the young fellows. When he used to frequent Garrick's 
 theater, and had " the liberty of the scenes," he says, " All the 
 actresses knew me, and dropped me a courtesy as they passed to 
 the stage." That would make a pretty picture : it is a pretty 
 picture in my mind, of youth, folly, gayety, tenderly surveyed 
 by wisdom's merciful, pure eyes.
 
 GEORGE THE THIRD. 61 
 
 George III. and his queen lived in a very unpretending but 
 elegant-looking house, on the site of the hideous pile under 
 which liis grand-daughter at present reposes. The king's mother 
 inhabited Carlton House, which contemporary prints represent 
 Avith a perfect paradise of a garden, with trim lawns, green 
 arcades, and vistas of classic statues. She admired these in 
 company with my Lord Bute, who had a fine classic taste, 
 and sometimes counsel took, and sometimes tea, in the pleas- 
 ant green arbors along with that poHte nobleman. Bute was 
 hated with a rage of which there have been few examples 
 in English history. He was the butt for everybody's abuse; 
 for Wilkes's devilish mischief; for Churchill's slashing sathe; 
 for the hooting of the mob that roasted the boot, his em- 
 blem, in a thousand bonfires ; that hated him because he was a 
 favorite and a Scotchman, calling him "Mortimer," " Lothario," 
 I know not what names, and accusing his royal mistress of all 
 sorts of crimes — the grave, lean, demure, elderly woman, who, 
 I dare say, was quite as good as her neighbors. Chatham 
 lent the aid of his great malice to influence the popular senti- 
 ment against her. He assailed, in the House of Lords, " the 
 secret influence, more mighty than the throne itself, which be- 
 trayed and clogged every administration." The most furious 
 pamphlets echoed the cry. " Impeach the king's mother," was 
 scribbled over every wall at the Court end of the town, Walpole 
 tells us. What had she done ? What had Frederick, Prince of 
 Wales, George's fatlier, done, that he was so loathed by George 
 II., and never mentioned by George III. ? Let us not seek for 
 stones to batter that forgotten grave, but acquiesce in the con- 
 temporary epitaph over liim ; 
 
 " Here lies Fred, 
 Who was alive, and is dead. 
 Had it been his father, 
 I liad much mther. 
 Had it been ffis brother, 
 Stiil better than anotlier. 
 Had it been his sister, 
 No one would have missed her. 
 Had it been the wliole generation, 
 Still better for the nation. 
 But since 'tis only Fred, 
 Who was alive, and is dead, 
 Tht^e's no more to be said."
 
 62 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 The widoAv, ■with eight children round her, prudently recon- 
 ciled herself with the king, and -vfon the old man's confidence 
 and good-will. A shrewd, hard, domineering, narrow-minded 
 woman, she educated her children according to her lights, and 
 spoke of the eldest as a dull, good boy. She kept him very 
 close: she held the tightest rein over him: she had curious pre- 
 judices and bigotries. His uncle, the burly Cumberland, taking 
 down a saber once, and drawing it to amuse the child — the boy 
 started back and turned pale. The prince felt a generous shock : 
 " What must they have told him about me ?" he asked. 
 
 His mother's bigotry and hatred he inherited with the cour- 
 ageous obstinacy of his own race ; but he was a firm believer 
 where his fathers had been free-thinkers, and a true and fond 
 supporter of the Chnrch, of which he was the titular defender. 
 Like other dull men, the king was all his life suspicious of supe- 
 rior people. He did not like Fox ; he did not like Reynolds ; 
 he did not like Nelson, Chatham, Burke ; he was testy at the 
 idea of all innovations, and suspicious of all innovators. He 
 loved mediocrities ; Benjamin West was his favorite painter ; 
 Beattie was his poet. The king lamented, not without pathos, 
 in his after-life, that his education had been neglected. He was 
 a dull lad, brought up by narrow-minded people. The cleverest 
 tutors in the world could have done httle, probably, to expand 
 that small intellect, though they might have improved his tastes, 
 and taught his perceptions some generosity. 
 
 But he admired as well as he could. There is little doubt that 
 a letter, written by the little Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg 
 Strelitz — a letter containing the most feeble commonplaces about 
 the horrors of war, and the most trivial remarks on the blessings 
 of peace, struck the young monarch greatly, and decided him 
 upon selecting the young princess as the sharer of his throne. I 
 pass over the stories of his juvenile loves — of Hannah Lightfoot, 
 the Quaker, to whom they say he was actually married (though 
 I don't know who has ever seen the register) — of lovely black- 
 haired Sarah Lennox, about whose beauty Walpole has written 
 in raptures, and who used to lie in wait for the young prince, 
 and make hay at him on the lawn of Holland House. He sighed 
 and he longed, but he rode away from her. Her picture still 
 hangs in Holland House, a magnificent master-piece of Reynolds, 
 a canvas worthy of Titian. She looks from the castle-window,
 
 GEOEGE THE THIRD. 63 
 
 holding a bird in her hand, at black-eyed young Charles Fox, 
 her nephew. The royal bird flew away from lovely Sarah. She 
 had to figure as bridemaid at her little Mecklenburg rival's wed- 
 ding, and died in our own time a quiet old lady, who had become 
 the mother of the heroic Napiers. 
 
 They say the little princess who had written the fine letter 
 about the horrors of war — a beautiful letter, without a single 
 blot, for which she was to be rewarded, like the heroine of the 
 old spelling-book story — was at play one day with some of her 
 young companions in the gardens of Strelitz, and that the young 
 ladies' conversation was, strange to say, about husbands. " Who 
 will take such a poor little princess as me?" Charlotte said, to 
 her friend, Ida von Bulow, and at that very moment the post- 
 man's horn sounded, and Ida said, " Princess I there is the sweet- 
 heart." As she said, so it actually turned out. The postman 
 brought letters from the splendid young King of England, who 
 said, "Princess ! because you have written such a beautiful let- 
 ter, which does credit to your head and heart, come and be 
 Queen of Great Britain. France, and Ireland, and the true wife 
 of your most obedieut servant, George!" So she jumped for 
 joy; and went up stairs and packed all her httle trunks; and 
 set off straightway for her kingdom in a beautiful yacht, with a 
 harpsichord on board for her to play upon, and around her a 
 bfeautiful fleet, all covered with flags and beautiful streamers, and 
 the distinguished Madame Auerbach complimented her with an 
 ode, a translation of which may be read in the Gentleman's Ma- 
 gazine to the present day : 
 
 " Her gallant navy through the main, 
 Now cleaves its liquid way. 
 There to their queen a chosen train 
 Of nymphs due reverence pay. 
 
 " Europa, when conveyed by Jove 
 To Crete's distinguished shore, 
 Greater attention scarce could prove, 
 Or be respected more." 
 
 They met, and they were married, and for years they led the 
 happiest, simplest liv'es sure ever led by married couple. It is 
 said the king winced when he first saw his homely little bride; 
 but, however that may be, he was a true and faithful husband to 
 her, as she was a faithful and loving wife. They had the sim{)lest
 
 64 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 pleasures — the very mildest and simplest — little country dances, 
 to which a dozen couple were invited, and where the honest king 
 w^ould stand up and dance for three hours at a time to one tune ; 
 after which delicious excitement they would go to bed without 
 any supper (the Court people grumbling sadly at that absence of 
 supper), and get up quite early the next morning, and perhaps 
 the next night have another dance ; or the queen would play on 
 the spinnet — she played pretty well, Haydn said — or the king 
 would read to her a paper out of the Spectator, or perhaps one 
 of Ogden's sermons. Arcadia ! what a life it must have been ! 
 There used to be Sunday drawing-rooms at Court ; but the young 
 king stopped these, as he stopped all that godless gambling 
 whereof we have made mention. Not that George was averse 
 to any innocent pleasures, or pleasures which he thought inno- 
 cent. He was a patron of the arts, after his fashion ; kind and 
 gracious to the artists whom he favored, and respectful to their 
 calling. He wanted once to establish an Order of Minerva for 
 literary and scientific characters ; the knights were to take rank 
 after the knights of the Bath, and to sport a straw-colored ribbon 
 and a star of sixteen points. But there was such a row among 
 the literati as to the persons who should be appointed that the 
 plan was given up, and Minerva and her star never came down 
 among us. 
 
 He objected to painting St. Paul's, as Popish practice ; accord- 
 ingly, the most clumsy heathen sculptures decorate that edifice at 
 present. It is fortunate that the paintings, too, were spared, for 
 painting and. drawing were woefully unsound at the close of the 
 last century ; and it is far better for our eyes to contemplate 
 w^hitewash (when we turn them away from the clergyman) than 
 to look at Opie's pitchy canvases, or Fuseli's livid monsters. 
 And yet there is one day in the year — a day when old George 
 loved with all his heart to attend it — when I think St. Paul's pre- 
 sented the noblest sight in the whole world : when five thousand 
 charity children, with cheeks like nosegays, and sweet, fresh 
 voices, sing the hymn which makes every heart thrill with praise 
 and happiness. I have seen a hundred grand sights in the world 
 — coronations, Parisian splendors, Crystal Palace openings, Pope's 
 chapels, with their processions of long-tailed cardinals and quav- 
 ering choirs of fat soprani — but think in all Christendom there is 
 no such sight as Charity Children's Day. Non Angli, sed angeli.
 
 GEORGE THE THIRD. 65 
 
 As one looks at that beautiful remltitude of innocents : as the first 
 note strikes : indeed one may almost fancy that cherubs are 
 singing. 
 
 Of church music the king was always very fond, showing skill 
 in it both as a critic and a performer. Many stories, mirthful 
 and affecting, are told of his behavior at the concerts which he 
 ordered. When he was blind and ill he chose the music for the 
 Ancient Concerts once, and the music and words which he 
 selected were from Samso7i Agonistes, and all had reference to 
 his bhndness, his captivity, and his affliction. He would beat 
 time with his music-roll as they sang the anthem in the Chapel 
 Eoyal. If the page below was talkative or inattentive, down 
 would come the music-roll on young scape-grace's powdered 
 head. The theater was always his delight. His bishops and 
 clergy used to attend it, thinking it no shame to appear where 
 that good man was seen. He is said not to have cared for Shak- 
 speare or tragedy much ; farces and pantomime were his joy ; and 
 especially when clown swallowed a carrot or a string of suasages, 
 he would laugh so outrageously that the lovely Princess by his 
 side would have to say, " My gracious monarch, do compose 
 yourself" But he continued to laugh, and at the very smallest 
 farces, as long as his poor wits were left him. 
 
 There is something to me exceedingly touching in that simple 
 early life of the king's. As long as his mother lived — a dozen 
 years after his marriage with the little spinnet-player — he was a 
 great, shy, awkward boy, under the tutelage of that hard parent. 
 She must have been a clever, domineering, cruel woman. She 
 kept her household lonely and in gloom, mistrusting almost all 
 people who came about her children. Seeing the young Duke 
 of Gloucester silent and unhappy once, she sharply asked him 
 the cause of his silence. " I am thinking," said the poor child. 
 " Thinking, sir ! and of what ?" " I am thinking if ever I have 
 a son I will not make him so unhappy as you make me." The 
 other sons were all wild, except George. Dutifully every even- 
 ing George and Charlotte paid their visit to the king's mother at 
 Carlton House. She had a throat complaint, of which she died ; 
 but to the last persisted in driving about the streets to show she 
 was alive. The night before her death the resolute woman talked 
 with her sou and daughter-in-law as usual, went to bed, ami was 
 found dead there in ihe morninrr. •' Georfre, be a kin<;!'' wei'e
 
 66 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 the words which she was for ever croaking in the ears of her 
 son : and a king the simple, stubborn, aflectionate, bigoted man 
 tried to be. 
 
 He did his best ; he worked according to his hghts ; what 
 virtue he knew, he tried to practice ; what knowledge he could 
 master, he strove to acquire. He was for ever drawing maps, 
 for example, and learned geography with no small care and 
 industry. He knew all about the family histories and genealo- 
 gies of his gentiy, and pretty histories he must have known. 
 He knew the whole Army List ; and all the facings, and the 
 exact number of the buttons, and all the tags and laces, and the 
 cut of all the cocked hats, pigtails, and gaiters in his army. He 
 knew the personnel of the Universities ; what doctors were 
 inclined to Socinianism, and who were sound Churchmen ; he 
 knew the etiquettes of his own and his grandfather's courts to a 
 nicety, and tlie smallest particulars regarding the routine of nnn- 
 isters, secretiiries, embassies, audiences; the humblest page in 
 the ante-room, or the meanest helper in the stables or kitchen. 
 These parts of the royal business he was capable of learning, and 
 he learned. But, as one thinks of an office, almost divine, per- 
 formed by any mortal man — of any single being pretending to 
 control the thoughts, to direct the faith, to order the implicit 
 obedience of brother milions, to compel them into war at his 
 offense or quarrel; to command, ''In this way you shall trade, 
 in this way you shall think ; these neighbors sliall be your allies 
 whom you shall help, these others your enemies whom ye shall 
 slay at my orders ; in this way you shall worship God" — who 
 can wonder that, when such a man as George took such an office 
 on himself, punishment and humiliation should fall upon people 
 and chief ? 
 
 Yet there is something grand about his courage. The battle 
 of the king with his aristocracy remains yet to be told by the 
 historian who shall view the reign of George more justly than 
 the trumpery panegyrists who wrote immediately after his 
 decease. It was he, with the people to back him, who made 
 the war with America ; it was he and the people who refused 
 justice to the Eoman Catholics ; and on both questions he beat 
 the patricians. He bribed : he bullied : he darkly dissembled on 
 occasion : he exercised a slippery perseverance, and a vindictive 
 resolution, wliich one almost admu-es as one thinks his character
 
 GEOKGE THE THIRD. 67 
 
 over. His courage was never to be beat. It trampled North 
 under foot : it bent the stiff neck of the younger Pitt : even his 
 illness never conquered that indomitable spirit. As soon as his 
 brain was clear it resumed the scheme, only laid aside when his 
 reason left him : as soon as his hands were out of the strait- 
 waistcoat they took up the pen and plan Avhich had engaged him 
 up to the moment of his malady. I believe it is by persons 
 believing themselves in the right that nine-tenths of the tyranny 
 of this world has been perpetrated. Arguing on that convenient 
 premiss, the Dey of Algiers would cut off twenty heads of a 
 morning ; Father Dominic would burn a score of Jews in the 
 presence of the Most Catholic King, and the Archbishops of 
 Toledo and Salamanca sing Amen. Protestants were roasted, 
 Jesuits hung and quartered at Smithfield, and witches burned at 
 Salem, and all by worthy people, Avho believed they had the best 
 authority for their actions. And so, with respect to old George, 
 even Americans, whom he hated and who conquered him, may 
 give him credit for having quite honest reasons for oppressing 
 them. Appended to Lord Brougham's biographical sketch of 
 Lord North are some autograph notes of the king, which let us 
 most curiously into the state of his mind. " The times certainly 
 require," says he, "the concurrence of all who wish to prevent 
 anarchy. I have no wish but the prosperity of my own domin- 
 ions, therefore I must look upon all who would not heartily assist 
 me as bad men, as well as bad subjects." That is the way he 
 reasoned. " I wish nothing but good, therefore every man who 
 does not agree with me is a traitor and a scoundrel." Remember 
 that he believed himself anointed by a Divine connnission* 
 remember that he was a man of slow parts and imperfect edu- 
 cation ; that the same awful will of Heaven which placed a crown 
 upon his head, which made him tender to his family, pure in his life, 
 courageous and honest, made him dull of comprehension, obsti- 
 nate of will, and at many times deprived him of reason. He 
 was the father of his people ; his rebeUious children must be 
 flogged into obedience. He was the defender of the Protestant 
 laith ; he would rather lay that stout head upon the block than 
 that Catholics should have a share in the government of England. 
 Anil you do not suppose that there are not honest bigots enough 
 in all countries to back kings in this kind of statesmanship? 
 Without doubt the American war was popular in England. In
 
 68 TUE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 1775 the address in favor of coercing the colonies was carried by 
 three hundred and four to one hundred and five in the Commons, 
 by 'One hundred and four to twenty-nine in the House of Lords. 
 Popular? — so was the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes popu- 
 lar in France : so was the massacre of St. Bartholomew ; so was 
 the Inquisition exceedingly popular in Spain. 
 
 Wars and revolutions are, however, the politician's province . 
 The great events of this long reign, the statesmen and orators 
 who illustrated it, I do not pretend to make the subjects of an 
 hour's hght talk. Let us return to our humbler duty of court 
 gossip. Yonder sits our little queen, surrounded by many stout 
 sons and fair daughters whom she bore to her faithful George. 
 The history of the daughters, as little Miss Burney has painted 
 them to us, is delightful. They were handsome — she calls them 
 beautiful ; they were most kind, loving, and lady-like ; they 
 were gracious to every person, high and low, Avho served them. 
 They had many little accomplishments of their own. This one 
 drew : that one played the piano : they all worked most prodigi- 
 ously, and fitted up whole suits of rooms — pretty, smiling Pen- 
 elopes — with their busy little needles. As we picture to our- 
 selves tiie society of eighty years ago, we must imagine hundreds 
 of thousands of groups of women in great high caps, tight bodies, 
 and full skirts, needling away, while one of the number, or per- 
 haps a favored gentleman in a pigtail, reads out a novel to the 
 company. Peep into the cottage at Olney, for example, and see 
 there Mrs. Unwin and Lady Hesketh, those high-bred ladies, 
 those sweet, pious women, and William Cowper, that delicate 
 wit, that trembling pietist, that refined gentleman, absolutely 
 reading out Jonathan Wild to the ladies ! What a change in 
 our manners, in our amusements, since then ! 
 
 King George's household was a model of an English gentle- 
 man's household. It was early ; it was kindly ; it was chari- 
 table; it was frugal; it was orderly ; it must have been stupid 
 to a degree which I shudder now to contemplate. No wonder 
 all the princes ran away from the lap of that dreary domestic 
 virtue. It always rose, rode, dined at stated intervals. Day 
 after day was the same. At the same hour at night the king 
 kissed his daughters' jolly cheeks; the princesses kissed their 
 mother's hand ; and Madame Thielke brought the royal night- 
 cap. At the same hour the equerries and women in waiting had
 
 GEOEGE THE THIED. 69 
 
 their little dinner, and cackled orer their tea. The king had his 
 backgammon or his evening concert; the equerries yawned 
 themselves to death in the ante-room ; or the king and his family- 
 walked on Windsor slopes, the king holding his darling little 
 Princess Amelia by the hand ; and the people crowded round 
 quite good-naturedly ; and the Eton boys thrust their chubby 
 cheeks under the crowd's elbows ; and the concert over, tlie 
 king never failed to take his enormous cocked hat off, and salute 
 his band, and say, " Thank you, gentlemen." 
 
 A quieter household, a more prosaic hfe than this of Kew or 
 Windsor, can not be imagined. Eain or shine, the king rode 
 every day for hours ; poked his red face into hundreds of cot- 
 tages round about, and showed that shovel hat and Windsor 
 uniform to farmers, to pig-boys, to old women making apple- 
 dumplings ; to all sorts of people, gentle and simple, about whom 
 countless stones are told. Nothing can be more undignified 
 than these stories. When Haroun Alraschid visits a subject in- 
 cog., the latter is sure to be very much the better for the calif's 
 magnificence. Old George showed no such royal splendor. He 
 used to give a guinea sometimes : sometimes feel in his pockets 
 and find he had no money : often ask a man a hundred ques- 
 tions ; about the number of his family, about his oats and beans, 
 about the rent he paid for his house, and ride on. On one 
 occasion he played the part of King Alfred, and turned a piece 
 of meat with a string at a cottager's house. When the old 
 woman came home, she found a paper with an inclosure of 
 money, and a note written by the royal pencil : " Five guineas 
 to buy a jack." It was not splendid, but it was kind and worthy 
 of Farmer George. One day, when the king and queen were 
 walking together, they met a Uttle boy — they were always fond 
 of children, the good folks — and patted the little white head. 
 " Whose little boy are you ?" asks the Windsor uniform. " I am 
 the king's beef-eater's httle boy," replied the child. On which 
 the king said, " Then kneel down and kiss the queen's hand." 
 But the innocent offspring of the beef-eater declined this treat. 
 " No," said he, " I won't kneel, for if I do, I shall spoil my new 
 breeches." The thrifty king ought to have hugged him and 
 knighted him on the spot. George's admirers wrote pages and 
 pages of such stories about him. One morning, before anybody 
 else was up, the king walked about Gloucester town ; 2>uslied
 
 VO ' THE FOUK GEOKGES. 
 
 over Molly the housemaid, who was scrubbing the door-steps 
 with her pail ; ran up stairs and woke all the equerries in their 
 bedrooms ; and then trotted down to the bridge, where, by this 
 time, a dozen of louts were assembled. " What ! is this Glouces- 
 ter New Bridge ?" asked our gracious monarch ; and the people 
 answered him, " Yes, your Majesty." " Why, then, my boys," 
 said he, " let us have a huzza !" After giving them which 
 intellectual gratification, he went home to breakfast. Our fathers 
 read these simple tales with fond pleasure ; laughed at these very 
 small jokes ; liked the old man who poked his nose into every 
 cottage ; who lived on plain wholesome roast and boiled ; who 
 cfespised your French kickshaws ; who was a true, hearty old 
 English gentleman. You may have seen Gilray's fliraous print 
 of tiim — in the old wig, in the stout old hideous Windsor uni- 
 form — as the King of Brobdignag, peering at a little Gulliver, 
 whom he holds up in one hand, while in the other he has an 
 opera-glass, through which he surveys the pigmy ? Our fathers 
 chose to set up George as the type of a great kmg ; and the little 
 Gulliver was the great Napoleon. We prided ourselves on our 
 prejudices; we blustered and bragged with absurd vain-glory ; 
 we dealt to our enemy a monstrous injustice of contempt and 
 scorn ; we fought him with all weapons, mean as weli as heroic. 
 There was no lie we would not believe ; no charge of crime 
 which our furious prejudice would not credit. I thought at one 
 time of making a collection of the lies which the French had 
 written against us, and we had published against them during 
 the war : it would be a strange memorial of popular falsehood. 
 
 Their majesties were very sociable potentates : and the Court 
 chronicler tells of numerous visits which they paid to their sub- 
 jects, gentle and simple : with whom they dined ; at whose great 
 country-houses they stopped ; or at whose poorer lodgings they 
 alfably partook of tea and bread-and-butter. Some of the great 
 Iblks spent enormous sums in entertaining their sovereigns. As 
 marks of special favor the king and queen sometimes stood as 
 sponsors for the children of the nobility. We find Lady Salis- 
 bury was so honored in the year 1786; and in the year 1802, 
 Lady Chesterfield. The Court News relates how her ladyship 
 received their majesties on a state bed " dressed with white satin 
 a-nd a profusion of lace ; the counterpane of white satin em- 
 broidered with ofold, and the bed of crimson satin lined with
 
 GEORGE THE THIRD. 11 
 
 ■white." The child -was first brought by the nurse to the Mar- 
 chioness of Bath, who presided as chief nurse. Then the mar- 
 chioness handed baby to the queen. Then the queen handed the 
 little darling to the Bishop of iSTorwich, the officiating clergyman ; 
 and, the ceremony over, a cup of caudle was presented by the 
 earl to his majesty on one knee, on a large gold waiter, placed 
 on a crimson velvet cushion. Misfortunes would occur in these 
 interesting genuflectory ceremonies of royal worship. Bubb 
 Dodington, Lord Melcombe, a very fat, puffy man, in a most 
 gorgeous court-suit, had to kneel, Cumberland says, and was so 
 fat and so tight that he could not get up again. " Kneel, sir, 
 kneel 1" cried my lord in waiting to a country mayor who had to 
 read an address, but who went on with his compliment standing. 
 " Kneel, sir, kneel !" cries my lord, in dreadful alarm. "I can't!" 
 cries the mayor, turning round; "don't you see I have got a 
 wooden leg?" 
 
 In the capital Barney Diary and Letters the home and court 
 life of good old King George and good old Queen Charlotte are 
 presented at portentous length. The king rose every morning 
 at six ; and had two hours to himself He thought it effeminate 
 to have a carpet in his bedroom. Shortly before eight the queen 
 and the royal family were always ready for him, and they pro- 
 ceeded to the king's chapel in the castle. There were no fires 
 in the passages : the chapel was scarcely alight : princesses, gov- 
 ernesses, equerries grumbled and caught cold ; but cold or hot, 
 it was their duty to go ; and, wet or dry, light or dark, the 
 stout old George was always in his place to say Amen to the 
 chaplain. 
 
 The queen's cliaracter is represented in Burney at full length. 
 She was a sensible, most decorous woman ; a very grand lady 
 on state occasions, simple enough in ordinary Ufe ; well read as 
 times went, and giving shrewd opinions about books; stingy, but 
 not unjust; not generally unkind to her dependents, but invin- 
 cible in her notions of etiquette, and quite angry if her people 
 suffered ill health in her service. She gave Miss Burney a 
 shabby pittance, and led the poor young woman a life which 
 well-nigh killed her. She never thought but that she was doing 
 Burney the greatest fiivor in taking her from freedom, fame, and 
 competence, and killing her off with languor in that dreary court. 
 It wa? not dreary to her. Had she been servant instead of mis-
 
 ^ THE FOUR GKORGES. 
 
 tress, her spirit would never have broken down ; she never 
 would have put a pin out of place, or been a moment from her 
 duty. She was not weak, and she could not pardon those who 
 were. She was perfectly correct m life, and she hated poor sin- 
 ners with a rancor such as virtue sometimes has. She must 
 have had awful private trials of her own : not merely with her 
 children, but with her husband, in those long days about which 
 nobody will ever know any thing now ; when he was not quite 
 insane ; when his incessant tongue was babbling folly, rage, 
 persecution ; and she had to smile and be respectful and atten- 
 tive under this intolerable ennui. The queen bore all her duties 
 stoutly, as she expected others to bear them. At a State 
 christening the lady who held the infant was tired and looked 
 unwell, and the Princess of Wales asked permission for her to 
 sit down. " Let her stand," said the queen, flicking the snuff 
 off her sleeve. She would have stood, the resolute old woman, 
 if she had had to hold the child till his beard was grown. " I 
 am seventy years of age," the queen said, facing a mob of ruffi- 
 ans who stopped her sedan : " I have been fifty years queen of 
 England, and I never was insulted before." Fearless, rigid, un- 
 forgiving httle queen I I don't wonder that her sons revolted 
 from her. 
 
 Of all the figures in that large family group which surrounds 
 George and his queen, the prettiest, I think, is the father's dar- 
 ling, the Princess Amelia, pathetic for her beauty, her sweetness, 
 her early death, and for the extreme passionate tenderness with 
 which her father loved her. This was his favorite among all the 
 children ; of his sons, he loved the Duke of York best. Bur- 
 ney tells a sad story of the poor old man at Weymouth, and how 
 eager he was to have this darling son Avith him. The king's 
 house was not big enough to hold tlie prince ; and his father had 
 a portable house erected close to his own, and at huge pains, so 
 that his dear Frederick should be near him. He clung on his 
 arm all the time of his visit; talked to no one else; had talked 
 of no one else for some time before. The prince, so long ex- 
 pected, staid but a single night. He had business in London the 
 next day, he said. The dullness of the old king's court stupefied 
 York and the other big sons of G-eorge III. They scared equer- 
 ries and ladies, frightened the modest little circle, with their
 
 GEORGE THE THIRD. 73 
 
 coarse spirits and loud talk. Of little comfort, indeed, were the 
 king's sons to the king. 
 
 But the pretty Amelia was his darling ; and the little maiden, 
 prattling and smihng in the fond arms of that old father, is a 
 sweet image to look on. There is a family picture in Burney, 
 which a man must be very hard-hearted not to like. She de- 
 scribes an after-dinner walk of the royal family at Windsor : 
 " It was really a mighty pretty procession," she says. " The 
 little princess, just turned of three years old, in a robe-coat 
 covered with fine muslin, a dressed close cap, white gloves, and 
 fan, walked on alone and first, highly dehghted with the parade, 
 and turning from side to side to see every body as she passed ; 
 for all the terracers stand up against the walls, to make a clear 
 passage for the royal family, the moment they come in sight. 
 Then followed the king and queen, no less delighted with the 
 joy of their little darling. The Princess Royal leaning on Lady 
 Elizabeth Waldegrave, the Princess Augusta holding by the 
 Duchess of Ancaster, the Princess Elizabeth led by Lady Char- 
 lotte Bertie, followed. Office here takes place of rank," says 
 Burney, to explain how it was that Lady E. Waldegrave, as 
 lady of the bedchamber, walked before a duchess; "General 
 Bude, and the Duke of Montague, and Major Price as equerry, 
 brought up the rear of the procession." One sees it : the band 
 playing its old music ; the sun shining on the happy, loyal crowd, 
 and lighting the ancient battlements, the rich elms, and purple 
 landscape, and bright green-sward ; the royal standard drooping 
 from the great tower yonder, as old George passes, followed by 
 his race, preceded by the charming infant, who caresses the 
 crowd with her innocent smiles. 
 
 " On sight of Mrs. Delany, the king instantly stopped to speak 
 to her ; the queen, of course, and the Uttle princess, and all the 
 rest, stood still. They talked a good while with the sweet old 
 lady, during which time the king once or twice addressed him- 
 self to me. I caught the queen's eye, and saw in it a little sur- 
 prise, but by no means any displeasure, to see me of the party. 
 The little princess went up to Mrs. Delany, of whom she is very 
 fond, and behaved like a little angel to her. She then, with a 
 look of inquiry and recollection, came behind Mrs. Delany, to 
 look at me. ' I am afraid,' said I, in a whisper, and stooping 
 down, 'your Royal Highness does not remember me?' Her 
 
 4
 
 14 THE FOUE GEORGES. 
 
 answer was an arch little smile, and a nearer approach, with her 
 lips pouted out to kiss me." 
 
 The princess wrote verses herself, and there are some pretty 
 plaintive lines attributed to her, which are more touching than 
 better poetry : 
 
 "Unthinking, idle, wild, and young, 
 I laughed, and danced, and talked, and sung : 
 And, proud of health, of freedom .vain, 
 Dreamed not of sorrow, care, or pain : 
 Concluding, in those hours of glee. 
 That all the world was made for me. 
 
 "But when the hour of trial came, 
 When sickness shook this trembling frame, 
 When folly's gay pursuits were o"er, 
 And I could sing and dance no more, 
 It then occurred, how sad 'twould be 
 Were this world only made for me." 
 
 The poor soul quitted it — and ere yet she was dead the ago- 
 nized father was in such a state that the officers round about him 
 were obliged to set watchers over him, and from November, 
 1810, George III. ceased to reign. AU the world knows the 
 story of his malady : all history presents no sadder figure than 
 that of the old man, blind and deprived of reason, wandering 
 through the rooms of his palace, addressing imaginary parlia- 
 ments, reviewing fancied troops, holding ghostly courts. I have 
 seen his picture as it was taken at this time, hanging in the 
 apartment of his daughter, the Landgravine of Hesse Hombourg 
 — amidst books and Windsor furniture, and a hundred fond 
 reminiscences of her English home. The poor old father is 
 represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard falling over his 
 breast — the star of his famous Order still idly shining on it. 
 He was not only sightless : he became utterly deaf. All hght, 
 all reason, aU sound of human voices, all the pleasures of this 
 world of God, were taken from him. Some sHght lucid mo- 
 ments he had ; in one of which the queen, desiring to see him, 
 entered the room, and found him singing a hymn, and accom- 
 panying himself at the harpsichord. When he had finished, he 
 knelt down and prayed aloud for her, and then for his family, 
 and then for the nation, concluding with a prayer for himself, 
 that it might please God to avert his heavy calamity from him, 
 but if not, to give him resignation to submit. He then burst 
 into tears, and his reason again fled.
 
 GEORGE THE THIRD. 75 
 
 What preacher need morahze on this story ? what words save 
 the simplest are requisite to tell it ? It is too terrible for tears. 
 The thought of such a misery smites me down in submission 
 before the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch Supreme over 
 empires and republics, the inscrutable Dispenser of hfe, death, 
 happiness, victory. "Oh brothers!" I said to those who heard 
 me first in America — " Oh brothers 1 speaking the same dear 
 mother tongue — oh comrades ! enemies no more, let us take a 
 mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse, and 
 call a truce to battle ! Low he lies to whom the proudest used 
 to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest : dead, 
 whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off his throne ; buf- 
 feted by rude hands ; with his children in revolt ; the darling of 
 his old age killed before him untimely ; our Lear hangs over her 
 breathless lips and cries, ' Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little 1' 
 
 ' 'Vex not his ghost — oh ! let him pass— he hates him 
 
 That would upon the rack of this tough world 
 Stretch him out longer I' 
 
 Hush! Strife and Quarrel, over the solemn gravel Sound, 
 Trumpets, a mournful march! Pall, Dark Curtain, upon his 
 pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy 1"
 
 GEORGE THE FOURTH. 
 
 IN Twiss's amusing Life of Eldon, we read ho^Y, on the death 
 of the Duke of York, the old chancellor became possessed 
 of a lock of the defunct prince's hair ; and so careful was he 
 respecting the authenticity of the relic, that Bessy Eldon his wife 
 sate in the room with the young man from Hamlet's, who dis- 
 tributed the ringlet into separate lockets, which each of the 
 Eldon family afterward wore. Tou know how, when George 
 IV. came to Edinburgh, a better man than he went on board 
 the royal yacht to welcome the king to his kingdom of Scotland, 
 seized a goblet from which his majesty had just drunk, vowed it 
 should remain forever as an heir-loom in his family, clapped the 
 precious glass in his pocket, and sate down on it and broke it 
 when he got home. Suppose the good sheriff's prize unbroken 
 now at Abbotsford, should we not smile with something like pity 
 as we beheld it ? Suppose one of those lockets of the no- 
 Popery prince's hair offered for sale at Christie's, quot lihras e duce 
 summo invenies? how many pounds would you find for the illus- 
 trious duke? Madame Tussaud has got, King George's corona- 
 tion robes ; is there any man now alive who would kiss the hem 
 of that trumpery ? He sleeps since thirty years : do not any of 
 you, who remember him, wonder that you once respected and 
 huzza'd and admired him ? 
 
 To make a portrait of him at first seemed a matter of small 
 difficulty. There is his coat, his star, his wig, his countenance 
 simpering under it : with a slate and a piece of chalk, I could at 
 this very desk perform a recognizable likeness of him. And yet 
 after reading of him in scores of volumes, hunting him through 
 old magazines and newspapers, having him here at a ball, there 
 at a public dinner, there at races and so forth, you find you have
 
 GEORGE THE FOURTH. 17 
 
 nothing — nothing but a coat and wig and a mask smiling below 
 it — nothing but a great simulacrum. His sire and grandsires 
 were men. One knoAvs what they were like : what they would 
 do in given circumstances : that on occasion they fought and 
 demeaned themselves like tough good soldiers. They had friends 
 whom they liked according to their natures; enemies whom they 
 hated fiercely ; passions, and actions, and individualities of their 
 own. The sailor king who came after G-eorge was a man : the 
 Duke of York was a man, big, burly, loud, jolly, cursing, cour- 
 ageous. But this George, what was he ? I look through all his 
 life, and recognize but a bow and a grin. I try and take him to 
 pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs 
 and a fur collar, a star and blue ribbon, a pocket-handkerchief 
 prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt's best nutty brown .wigs 
 reeking with oil, a set of teeth and a huge black stock, under- 
 waistcoats, more underwaistcoats, and then nothing. I know of 
 no sentiment that he ever distinctly uttered. Documents are 
 published under his name, but people wrote them — private let- 
 ters, but people spelled them. He put a great George P. or 
 George E. at the bottom of the page and fancied he had written 
 the paper : some bookseller's clerk, some poor author, some man 
 did the work ; saw to the spelling : cleaned up the slovenly sen- 
 tences, and gave the lax maudlin slipslop a sort of consistency. 
 He must have had an individuality : the dancing-master whom 
 he emulated, nay, surpassed — the wig-maker who curled his 
 toupee for him — the tailor who cut his coats, had that. But, 
 about George, one can get at nothing actual. That outside, I am 
 certain, is pad and tailor's work ; there may bo something be- 
 hind, but what ? We can not get at the character ; no doubt 
 never shall. Will men of the future have nothing better to do 
 than to unswathe and interpret that royal old mummy ? I own 
 I once used to think it would be good sport to pursue him, fasten 
 on him, and pull him down. But now I am ashamed to mount 
 and lay good dogs on, to summon a full field, and then to hunt 
 the poor game. 
 
 On the 12th August, 1762, the forty-seventh anniversary of 
 the accession of the House of Brunswick to the English throne, 
 all the bells in London pealed in gratulation, and announced that 
 an heir to George III. was born. Five days afterward the king 
 was pleased to pass letters patent under the great seal, creating
 
 78 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 H.R.H. the Prince of Great Britain, Electoral Prince of Bruns- 
 wick Liineburg, Duke of Cornwall and Rothsay, Earl of Carrick, 
 Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Great Steward of 
 Scotland, Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester. 
 
 All the people at his birth thronged to see this lovely child ; 
 and behind a gilt china-screen railing in St. James's Palace, in a 
 cradle surmounted by the three princely ostrich feathers, the 
 royal infant was laid to delight the eyes of the lieges. Among 
 the earliest instances of homage paid to him, I read that " a 
 'curious Indian bow and arrows wei-e sent to the prince from his 
 father's faithful subjects in New York." He was fond of pLiying 
 with these toys : an old statesman, orator, and wit of his grand- 
 father's and great-grandfather's time, never tired of his business, 
 still eager in his old age to be well at court, used to play Avith 
 the little prince, and pretend to fall down dead when the prince 
 shot at him with his toy bow and arrows — and get up and fall 
 down dead over and over again — to the increased delight of the 
 child. So that he was flattered from his cradle upward ; and 
 before his little feet could walk, statesmen and courtiers were 
 busy kissing them. 
 
 There is a pretty picture of the royal infant — a beautiful 
 buxom child — asleep in his mother's lap ; who turns round and 
 holds a finger to her lip, as if she would bid the courtiers around 
 respect the baby's slumbers. From that day until his decease, 
 sixty-eight years after, I suppose there were more pictures taken 
 of that personage than of any other human being who ever was 
 born and died — in every kind of uniform and every possible 
 court-dress — in long fair hair, with powder, with and without a 
 pig-tail — in every conceivable cocked-hat — in dragoon uniform 
 — in Windsor uniform — in a field-marshal's clothes — in a Scotch 
 kilt and tartans, with dirk and claymore (a stupendous figure) — 
 in a frogged frockcoat with a fur collar and tight breeches and 
 silk stockings — in wigs of every color, fair, brown, and black — 
 in his famous coronation robes finally, with which performance 
 he was so much in love that he distributed copies of the picture 
 to all the courts and British embassies in Europe, and to num- 
 berless clubs, town-halls, and private fiiends. I remember as a 
 young man how almost every dining-room had his portrait. 
 
 There is plenty of biograpliical tattle about the prince's boy- 
 hood. It is told with what astonishing rajjidity he learned all
 
 GEORGE THE FOURTH. 79 
 
 languages, ancient and modern ; how he rode beautifully, sang 
 charmingly, and played elegantly on the violoncello. That he 
 was beautiful was patent to all eyes. He had a high spirit : and 
 once, when he had had a difference with his father, burst into 
 the royal closet and called out, " Wilkes and Hberty for ever !" 
 He was so clever that he confounded his very governors in 
 learning ; and one of them, Lord Bruce, having made a false 
 quantity in quoting Greek, the admirable young prince instantly 
 corrected him. Lord Bruce could not remain a governor after 
 this humiliation ; resigned his office, and, to soothe his feelings, 
 was actually promoted to be an earl ! It is the most wonderful 
 reason for promoting a man that ever I heard. Lord Bruce was 
 made an earl for a blunder in prosody ; and Nelson was made a 
 baron for the victory of the Nile. 
 
 Lovers of long sums have added up the millions and millions 
 which, in the course of his brilliant existence, this single prince 
 consumed. Besides his income of fifty thousand pounds, sev- 
 enty thousand pounds, one hundred thousand pounds, and one 
 hundred and twenty thousand pounds a year, we read of three 
 applications to Parliament : debts to the amount of one hundred 
 and sixty thousand pounds, of six hundred and fifty thousand 
 pounds; besides mysterious foreign loans, whereof he pocketed 
 the proceeds. What did he do for all this money ? Why was 
 he to have it? If he had been a manufacturing town, or a 
 populous rural district, or an army of five thousand men, he 
 would not have cost more. He, one solitary stout man, who did 
 not toil, nor spin, nor fight — what had any mortal done that he 
 should be pampered so ? 
 
 In 1784, when he was twenty-one years of age, Carlton 
 Palace was given to him, and furnished by the nation with as 
 much luxury as could be devised. His pockets were filled with 
 money : he said it was not enough ; he flung it out of window: 
 he spent ten tliousand pounds a year for the coats on his back. 
 The nation gave him more money, and more, and more. The 
 sum is past counting. He wa.s a prince, most lovely to look on, 
 and christened Prince Florizel on his first appearance in the 
 world. That he was the handsomest prince in the whole world 
 was agreed by men, and alas I by many women. 
 
 I suppose he must have been very graceful. Tiicre are so 
 many testimonies to the charm of his manner that we must
 
 80 THE FOUR GEOEGES. 
 
 allow him great elegance and powers of fascination. He, and 
 the King of Prance's brother, the Count d'Artois, a charming 
 young prince who danced deliciously on the tight-rope — a poor 
 old tottering exiled king, who asked hospitahty of King G-eorge's 
 successor, and Hved a while in the palace of Mary Stuart — 
 divided in their youtli the title of first gentleman of Europe. 
 We in England of course gave the prize to our gentleman. Un- 
 til George's death the propriety of that award was scarce ques- 
 tioned or the doubters voted rebels and traitors. Only the other 
 day I was reading in the reprint of the dehghtful Nodes of 
 Christopher North, The health of THE KING is drunk in 
 large capitals by the loyal Scotsman. You would fancy him a 
 hero, a sage, a statesman, a pattern for kings and men. It was 
 Walter Scott who had that accident with the broken glass I 
 spoke of anon. He was the king's Scottish champion, rallied all 
 Scotland to him, made loyalty the fashion, and laid about him 
 fiercely with his claymore upon all the prince's enemies. The 
 Brunswicks had no such defenders as those two Jacobite com- 
 moners, old Sam Johnson the Lichfield chapman's son, and Wal- 
 ter Scott, the Edinburgh lawyer's. 
 
 Nature and circumstance had done their utmost to prepare 
 the prince for being spoiled : the dreadful dullness of papa's 
 court, its stupid amusements, its dreary occupations, the madden- 
 ing humdrum, the stifling sobriety of its routine, would have 
 made a scape-grace of a much less lively prince. All the big 
 princes bolted from that castle of ennui where old King George 
 sat, posting up his books and droning over his Handel; and old 
 Queen Charlotte over her snufl' and her tambour-frame. Most 
 of the sturdy, gallant sons settled down after sowing their wild 
 oats, and became sober subjects of their father and brother — not 
 ill-liked by the nation, which pardons j^outhful irregularities 
 readily enough, for the sake of pluck, and unaft'ectedness, and 
 good-humor. 
 
 The boy is father of the man. Our prince signalized his 
 entrance iuto the world by a feat worthy of his future life. '^He 
 invented a new shoe-buckle. It was an inch long and five inches 
 broad. " It covered almost the whole instep, reaching down to 
 the ground on either side of the foot." A sweet invention ! 
 lovely and useful as the prince on whose foot it sparkled. At his 
 fii'st appearance at a court-ball, we read that " his coat was pink
 
 GEORGE THE FOURTH. 81 
 
 silk, -with white cuffs; Lis waistcoat white silk, embroidered with 
 various colored foil, and adorned with a profusion of French 
 paste. And his hat was ornamented with two rows of steel 
 beads, five thousand in number, with a button and loop of the 
 same metal, and cocked in a new military style." What a Flor- 
 izel ! Do these details seem trivial ? They are the grave inci- 
 dents of his life. His biographers say that when he commenced 
 housekeeping in that splendid new palace of his, the Prince of 
 Wales had some windy projects of encouraging literature, science, 
 and the arts ; of having assemblies of literary characters ; and 
 1 societies for the encouragement of geography, astronomy, and 
 \botany. Astronomy, geography, and botany ! Fiddle-sticks ! 
 ^rench ballet-dancers, French cooks, horse-jockeys, buffoons, 
 procurers, tailors, boxers, fencing-masters, china, jewel, and gim- 
 a-ack merchants — those were his real companions. At first he 
 made a pretense of having Burke, and Pitt, and Sheridan for his 
 friends. But how could such men be serious before such an 
 empty scape-grace as this lad ? Fox might talk dice with him, 
 and Sheridan wine ; but what else had these men of genius in 
 common with their tawdry young host of Carlton House ? That 
 fribble the leader of such men as Fox and Bui-ke I That man's 
 opinions about the constitution, the India BUI, justice to the 
 Catholics — about any question graver than the button for a 
 waistcoat or the sauce for a partridge — worth any thing ! The 
 friendship between the prince and the Whig chiefs was impos- 
 sible. They were hypocrites in pretending to respect him, and 
 if he broke the hollow compact between them who shall blame 
 him ? His natural companions were dandies and parasites. He 
 could talk to a tailor or a cook ; but, as the equal of great states- 
 men, to set up a creature, lazy, weak, indolent, besotted, of 
 monstrous vanity, and levity incurable — it is absurd. They 
 thought to use him, and did for a while : but they must have 
 known how timid he was ; how entirely heartless and treacher- 
 ous, and have expected his desertion. His next set of friends 
 were mere table companions, of whom he grew tired too ; then 
 we hear of him with a very few select toadies, mere boys from 
 school or the Guards, whose sprightliness tickled the fancy of the 
 worn out voluptuary. ■ What mattere what friends he had? He 
 dropped all his friends ; he never could have real friends. An 
 
 4*
 
 82 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 heir to the throne has flatterers, adventurers who hang about 
 him, ambitious men who use him ; but friendship is denied him. 
 
 And women, I suppose, are as false and selfish in their dealings 
 with such a character as men. Shall we take the Leporello part, 
 flourish a catalogue of the conquests of this royal Don Juan, and 
 tell the names of the favorites to whom, one after the other, 
 George Prince flung his pocket-handkerchief? What purpose 
 would it answer to say how Perdita was pursued, won, deserted, 
 and by whom succeeded ? What good in knowing that he did 
 actually marry Mrs. FitzHerbert according to the rites of the 
 Roman Catholic Church ; that her marriage settlements have 
 been seen in London ; that the names of the witnesses to her 
 marriage are known. This sort of vice that we are now come 
 to presents no new or fleeting trait of manners. Debauchees, 
 dissolute, heartless, fickle, cowardly, have been ever since the 
 world began. This one had more temptations than most, and so 
 much may be said in extenuation for him. 
 
 It was an unlucky thing for this doomed one, and tending to 
 lead him yet farther on the road to the deuce, that besides being 
 lovely, so that women were fascinated by him ; and heir-appar- 
 ent, so that all the world flattered him ; he should have a beau- 
 tiful voice, which led him directly in the way of drink ; and thus 
 all the pleasant devils were coaxing on poor Florizel ; desire, and 
 idleness, and vanity, and drunkenness, all clashing their merry 
 cymbals and bidding him come on. 
 
 We first hear of his warbling sentimental ditties under the walls 
 of Kew Palace by the moonlight banks of Thames, with Lord 
 Viscount Leporello keeping watch lest the music should be dis- 
 turbed. 
 
 Singing after dinner and supper was the universal fashion of 
 the day. You may fancy all England sounding with choruses, 
 some ribald, some harmless, but all occasioning the consumption 
 of a prodigious deal of fermented liquor. 
 
 " The jolly muse her wings to try no frolic flights need take. 
 But round the bowl would dip and fly, lite swallows round a lake," 
 
 sang Morris in one of his gallant Anacreontics, to which the 
 prince many a time joined in chorus, and of which the burden is, 
 
 "And that I think 's a reason fair to drink and fill again."
 
 GEORGE THE FOURTH, 83 
 
 This delightful boon companion of the prince's found " a reason 
 fair" to forego filling and drinking, saw the error of his ways, 
 gave up the bowl and chorus, and died retired and religious. 
 The prince's table, no doubt, was a very tempting one. The 
 wits came and did their utmost to amuse him. It is wonderful 
 how the spirits rise, the wit brightens, the wine has an aroma, 
 when a great man is at the head of the table. Scott, the loyal 
 cavalier, the king's true liegeman, the very best raconteur of his 
 time, poured out with an endless generosity his store of old-world 
 learning, kindness^ and humor. Grattan contributed to it his 
 wondrous eloquence, fancy, feeling. Tom Moore perched upon 
 it for a while, and piped his most exquisite little love-tunes on 
 it, flying away in a twitter of indignation afterward, and attack- 
 ing the prince with bill and claw. In such society no wonder 
 the sitting was long, and the butler tired of drawing corks. 
 Remember what the usages of the time were, and that William 
 Pitt, coming to the House of Commons after having drunk a 
 bottle of port-wine at his own house, would go into Bellamy's 
 with Duudas, and help finish a couple more. 
 
 You peruse volumes after volumes about our prince, and find 
 some half-dozen stock stories — indeed not many more — common 
 to all the histories. He was good-natured ; an indolent, volup- 
 tuous prince, not unkindly. One story, the most favorable to 
 him of all perhaps, is that as Prince Regent, he was eager to hear 
 all that could be said in behalf of prisoners condemned to death, 
 and anxious, if possible, to remit the capital sentence. He was 
 kind to his servants. There is a story common to all biographies, 
 of Molly the housemaid, who, when his household was to be 
 broken u{), owing to some reforms which he tried absurdly to 
 practice, was discovered crying, as she dusted the chairs, because 
 she was to leave a master who had a kind word for all his serv- 
 ants. Another tale is that of a groom of the prince's being dis- 
 covered in corn and oat peculations, and dismissed by the per- 
 sonage at the head of the stables; the prince had word of John's 
 disgrace, remonstrated with him very kindly, generously rein- 
 stated him, and bade him promise to sin no more — a promise 
 which John kept. Another story is very fondly told of the 
 prince as a young man hearing of an officer's family in distress, 
 and how he straightway borrowed six or eiglit hundred pounds, 
 put his long, fair hair under his hat, and so disguised carried the
 
 84 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 money to tne starving family. He sent money, too, to Sheridan on 
 his deathbed, and would have sent more had not death ended the 
 career of that man of genius. Besides these, there are a few pretty 
 speeches, kind and graceful, to persons with whom he was 
 brought in contact. But he turned upon twenty friends. He 
 was fond and familiar with them one day, and he passed them 
 on the next without recognition. He used them, liked them, 
 loved them perhaps in his way, and then separated from them. 
 On Monday he kissed and fondled poor Perdita, and on Tuesday 
 he met her and did not know her. On Wedqesday he was very 
 affectionate with that wretched Brummell, and on Thursday for- • 
 got him ; cheated him even out of a snufi-box which he owed 
 the poor dandy ; saw him, years afterward, in his downfall and 
 poverty, when the bankrupt Beau sent him another snufi-box, 
 with some of the snuff he used to love, as a piteous token of 
 remembrance and submission, and the king took the snuff, and 
 ordered h'is horses and drove on, and had not the grace to notice 
 his old companion, favorite, rival, enemy, superior. In Wraxall 
 there is some gossip about him. When the charming, beautiful, 
 generous Duchess of Devonshire died — the lovely lady whom he 
 used to call his dearest duchess once, and preteud to admire as 
 all English society admired her — he said, " Then we have lost 
 the best bred woman in England." " Then we have lost the 
 kindest heart in England," said noble Charles Fox. On another 
 occasion, when three noblemen were to receive the Garter, says 
 Wraxall, " a gi-eat personage observed that never did three men 
 receive the order in so characteristic a manner. The Duke of A. 
 advanced to the sovereign with a phlegmatic, cold, awkward air, 
 Uke a clown ; Lord B. came forward fawning and smiling like a 
 courtier ; Lord C. presented himself easy, imembarrassed, hke a 
 gentleman." These are the stories one has to recall about the 
 prince and king — kindness to a housemaid, generosity to a groom, 
 criticism on a bow. There are no better stories about him . they 
 are mean and trivial, and they characterize him. The great war 
 of empires and giants goes on. Day by day victories are won 
 and lost by the brave. Torn, smoky flags and battered eagles 
 are wrenched from the heroic enemy and laid at his feet ; and he 
 sits there on his throue and smiles, and gives the guerdon of 
 valor to the conqueror. He ! Elliston the actor, when the Cor- 
 onation was performed, in which he took the principal part, used
 
 GEORGE THE FOURTH. 85 
 
 to fancy himself the king, burst into tears, and hiccup a blessing 
 on the people. I beUeve it is certain about George IV. that he 
 had heard so much of the war, knighted so many people, and 
 ■worn such a prodigious quantity of marshals' uniforms, cocked 
 hats, cocks' feathers, scarlet and bulUon in general, that he actu- 
 ally fancied he had been present in some campaigns, and, under 
 the name of General Brock, led a tremendous charge of the Ger- 
 man legion at Waterloo. 
 
 He is dead but thirty years, and one asks how a great society 
 could have tolerated liim 'i Would we bear him now ? In this 
 quarter of a century what a silent revolution has been working 1 
 How it has separated us from old times and manners I How it 
 has changed men themselves I I can see old gentlemen now 
 among us, of perfect good breeding, of quiet Uves, with vener- 
 able gray heads, fondling their grandchildren ; and look at them, 
 and wonder at what they were once. That gentleman of the 
 grand old school, when he was in the Tenth Hussars, and dined 
 at the prince's table, would fall under it night after night. Night 
 after night that gentleman sat at Brookes's, or Eaggett's, over 
 the dice. If, m the petulance of play or drink, that gentleman 
 spoke a sharp word to his neighbor, he and the other would in- 
 fallibly go out and try to shoot each other the next morning. 
 That gentleman would drive his friend Eichmond, the black 
 boxer, do^^^l to Moulsey, and hold his coat, and shout, and swear, 
 and hurrah with delight, while the blackman was beating Dutch 
 Sam the Jew. That gentleman would take a manly pleasure in 
 pulling his own coat off, and thrashing a bargeman in a street 
 row. That gentleman has been in a watch-house. That gentle- 
 man, so exquisitely poUte with ladies in a dra\ving-room, so 
 loftily courteous, if he talked now as he used among men in his 
 youth, would swear so as to make your hair stand on end. I 
 met lately a very old German gentleman, who had served in our 
 army at the beginning of the century. Since then he has lived 
 on his own estate, but rarely meeting with an Englishman, whose 
 language — the language of fifty years ago, that is — he possesses 
 perfectly. When this highly bred old man began to speak Eng- 
 hsh to me, almost every other word he uttered was an oath : as 
 they used it (they swore dreadfully in Flanders) with the Duke 
 of York before Valenciennes, or at Carlton House over the sup- 
 per and cards. Eead Byron's letters. So accustomed is the
 
 86 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 young man to oaths that he employs them even in writing to his 
 friends, and swears by the post. Read his account of the doings 
 of young men at Cambridge ; of the ribald professors, one of 
 whom " could pour out G-reek like a drunken Helot," and whose 
 excesses surpassed even those of the young men. Read Mat- 
 thews's description of the boyish lordling's housekeeping at New- 
 stead ; the skull-cap passed round, the monks' dresses from the 
 masquerade warehouse, in which the young scapegraces used to 
 sit until daylight, chanting appropriate songs round their wine. 
 " We come to breakfast at two or three o'clock," Matthews says. 
 " There are gloves and foils for those who like to amuse them- 
 selves, or we fire pistols at a mark in the hall, or we worry the 
 wolf." A jolly life truly ! The noble young owner of the man- 
 sion writes about such affairs himself in letters to his friend Mr. 
 John Jackson, pugilist, in London. 
 
 All the prince's time tells a similar strange story of manners 
 and pleasure. In Wraxall we find the prime minister himself, 
 the redoubted William Pitt, engaged in high jinks with person- 
 ages of no less importance than Lord Thurlow, the lord chancel- 
 lor, and Mr. Dundas, the treasurer of the navy. ■» Wraxall relates 
 how these three statesmen, returning after dinner from Addis- 
 combe, found a turnpike open, and galloped through it without 
 paying the toll. The turnpike man, fancying they were high- 
 waymen, fired a blunderbuss after them, but missed them ; and 
 the poet sang — 
 
 " How as Pitt -n-andered d.irkling o'er the plain, 
 His reason drown'd ia Jenkinson"s Champagne, 
 A rustic's hand, but righteous fate withstood, 
 Had shed a premier's for a robber's blood." 
 
 Here we have the treasurer of the navy, the lord high chancel- 
 lor, and the prime minister, all engaged in a most undoubted 
 lark. In Eldon's Memoirs, about the very same time, I read that 
 the bar loved wine, as well as the woolsack. Not John Scott 
 himself; he was a good boy always; and though he loved port- 
 wine, loved Ms business and his duty and his fees a great deal 
 better. 
 
 He has a Northern Circuit story of those days, about a party 
 at the house of a certain Lawyar Fawcett, who gave a dinner 
 every year to the counsel.
 
 GEORGE THE FOUETH. 87 
 
 " On one occasion," related Lord Eldon, " I heard Lee say, 'I 
 can not leave Fawcett's wine. Mind, Davenport, you will go 
 home immediately after dinner, to read the brief in that cause 
 that we have to conduct to-morrow.' 
 
 " ' Not I,' said Davenport. ' Leave my dinner and my wine 
 to read a brief I No, no, Lee ; that won't do.' 
 
 " ' Then,' said Lee, ' what is to be done ? who else is em- 
 ployed ?' 
 
 " Davenport. ' Oh ! young Scott.' 
 
 " Lee. 'Oh I he must go. Mr. Scott, you must go home im- 
 mediately, and make yourself acquainted with that cause, before 
 our consultation this evening.' 
 
 " This was very hard upon me ; but I did go, and there was an 
 attorney from Cumberland, and one from Northumberland, and 
 I do not know how many other persons. Pretty late, in came 
 Jack Lee, as drunk as he could be. 
 
 " ' I can not consult to-night ; I must go to bed,' he exclaimed, 
 and away he went. Then came Sir Thomas Davenport. 
 
 " ' We can not have a consultation to-night, Mr. Wordsworth' 
 (AVordsworth, I think, was the name ; it was a Cumberland 
 name), shouted Davenport. ' Don't you see how drunk Mr. 
 Scott is ? it is impossible to consult.' Poor me ! who had scarce 
 had any dinner, and lost all my wine — I was so drunk that I 
 could not consult I Well, a verdict was given against us, and it 
 was all owing to Lawyer Fawcett's dinner. We moved for a 
 new trial ; and I must say, for the honor of the bar, that those 
 two gentlemen. Jack Lee and Sir Thomas Davenport, paid all the 
 expenses between them of the first trial. It is the only instance 
 I ever knew, but they did. We moved for a new trial (on the 
 ground, I suppose, of the counsel not being in their senses), and 
 it was granted. When it came on, the following year, the judge 
 rose and said : 
 
 " ' Gentlemen, did any of you dine with Lawyer Fawcett 
 yesterday ? for, if you did, I will not hear this cause till next 
 year.' 
 
 " There was great laughter. We gained the cause that time." 
 
 On another occasion, at Lancaster, where poor Bozzy must 
 needs be going the Northern Circuit, " we found him," says Mr. 
 Scott, " lying upon the pavement inebriated. We subscribed a 
 guinea at supper for him, and a half crown for his clerk" — (no
 
 88 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 doubt there was a large bar, and that Scott's joke did not cost 
 him much), "and sent liim, when he waked next morninsr, a 
 brief, with instructions to move for what we denominated the 
 writ of quare adhcesit pavimento f with observations duly calcu- 
 lated to induce him to think that it requu-ed great learning to 
 explain the necessity of granting it, to the judge before whom he 
 was to move." Boswell sent all round the town to attorneys for 
 books, that might enable him to distinguish himself — but in vain. 
 He moved, however, for the writ, making the best use he could 
 of the observations in the brief The judge was perfectly aston- 
 ished, and the audience amazed. The judge said, " I never heard 
 of such a writ — what can it be that adheres pavimento ? Are 
 any of you gentlemen at the bar able to explain this ?" 
 
 The bar laughed. At last one of them said : 
 
 " My lord, Mr. Boswell last night adhcesit pavimento. There 
 was no moving him for some time. At last he was carried 
 to bed, and he has been dreaming about himself and the pave- 
 ment." 
 
 The canny old gentleman relishes these jokes. When the 
 Bishop of London was moving from the deanery of St. Paul's, 
 he says he asked a learned friend of his, by name Will Hay, how 
 he should move some especially fine claret, about which he was 
 anxious. 
 
 " Pray, my lord bishop," says Hay, " how much of the wine 
 have you ?" 
 
 The bishop said six dozen. 
 
 " If that is all," Hay answered, "you have but to ask me six 
 times to dinner, and I will carry it all away myself." 
 
 There were giants in those days ; but this joke about wine is 
 not so fearful as one perpetrated by Orator Thelwall, in the heat 
 of the French Revolution, ten years later, over a frothing pot of 
 porter. He blew the head off, and said, " This is the way I 
 would serve all kings." 
 
 Now we come to yet higher personages, and find their doings 
 recorded in the blushing pages of timid little Miss Burney's 
 Memoirs. She represents a prince of the blood in quite a royal 
 condition. The loudness, the bigness, boisterousness, creaking 
 boots, and rattling oaths, of the young princes, appeared to have 
 frightened the prim household of Windsor, and set all the tea- 
 cups twittering on tlie tray. On the night of a ball and birthday,
 
 GEORGE THE FOURTH. 89 
 
 when one of the pretty, kind princesses was to come out, it was 
 agreed that her brother, Prince William Henry, should dance the 
 opening minuet with her, and lie came to visit the household at 
 their dinner. 
 
 " At dinner Mrs. Schwellenberg presided, attired magnifi- 
 cently ; Miss Goldsworthy, Mrs. Stanforth, Messrs. Du Luc and 
 Stanhope, dined with us ; and while we were still eating fruit 
 the Duke of Clarence entered. 
 
 " He was just risen from the king's table, and waiting for his 
 equipage to go home and prepare for the ball. To give you an 
 idea of the energy of his royal highness's language, I ought to set 
 apart an objection to writing, or rather intimating, certain for- 
 cible words, and beg leave to show you in genuine colors a 
 royal sailor. 
 
 " We all rose, of course, upon his entrance, and the two 
 gentlemen placed themselves behind their chairs, while the foot- 
 men left the room. But he ordered us all to sit down, and 
 called the men back to hand about some wine. He was in ex- 
 ceeding high spirits, and in the utmost good humor. He placed 
 himself at the head of the table, next Mrs. Schwellenberg, and 
 looked remarkably well, gay, and full of sport and mischief; yet 
 clever withal, as well as comical. 
 
 " ' Well, this is the first day I have ever dined with the king 
 at St. James's on his birthday. Pray, have you all drunk his 
 Ma.jesty's health ?' 
 
 " ' No, your royal highness ; your royal highness might make 
 dem do dat,' said Mrs. Schwellenberg. 
 
 " ' Oh, by , I will I Here, you (to the footman), bring 
 
 Champagne ; I'll drink the king's health again, if I die for it. 
 YeS, I have done it pretty well already ; so has the king, I 
 promise you ! I believe his Majesty was never taken such good 
 care of before ; we have kept his spirits up, I promise you ; we 
 have enabled him to go through his fatigues ; and I should have 
 done more still, but for the ball and Mary — I have promised to 
 dance with Mary. I must keep sober for Mary.' " 
 
 Indefatigable Miss Burney continues for a dozen pages report- 
 ing H.RH.'s conversation, and indicating, with a humor not 
 unworthy of the clever little author of Evelina, the increasing 
 state of excitement of the young sailor prince, who drank more 
 and more Champagne, stopped old Mrs. Schwellenberg's reinon-
 
 90 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 strances by giving the old lady a kiss, and telling her to hold her 
 potato-trap, and Avho did not " keep sober for Mary." Mary had 
 to find another partner that night, for the royal William Henry 
 could not keep his legs. 
 
 Will you have a picture of the amusements of another royal 
 prince ? It is the Duke of York, the blundering general, the 
 beloved commander-in-chief of the army, the brother with whom 
 George IV. had had many a midnight carouse, and who con- 
 tinued his habits of pleasure almost till death seized his stout 
 body. 
 
 In Puckler Muskau's Letters, that German prince describes a 
 bout with H.R.H., who in his best time was such a powerfnl 
 toper that " six bottles of claret after dinner scarce made a per- 
 ceptible change in his countenance." 
 
 " I remember," says Puckler, " that one evening — indeed, it 
 was past midnight — he took some of his guests, among whom 
 were the Austrian embassador, Count Meervelt, Count Beroldin- 
 gen, and myself, into his beautiful armory. We tried to swing 
 several Turkish sabres, but none of us had a very firm grasp ; 
 whence it happened that the Duke and Meervelt both scratched 
 themselves with a sort of straight Indian sword so as to draw 
 blood. Meervelt then wished to try if the sword cut as well as 
 a Damascus, and attempted to cut through one of the wax 
 candles that stood on the table. The experiment answered so ill 
 that both the candles, candlesticks and all, fell to the ground and 
 were extinguished. While we were groping in the dark and 
 trying to find the door, the duke's aid-de-camp stammered out 
 in great agitation, 'By G^ — , sir, I remember the sword is 
 poisoned!' 
 
 " You may conceive the agreeable feelings of the wounded at 
 this intelligence 1 Happily, on further examination, it appeared 
 that claret, and not poison, was at the bottom of the colonel's 
 exclamation." 
 
 And now* I have one more story of the bacchanalian sort, in 
 which Clarence and York, and the very highest personage of the 
 realm, the great Prince Regent, all play parts. The feast took 
 place at the Pavilion at Brighton, and was described to me by a 
 gentleman who was present at the scene. In Gilray's carica- 
 tures, and among Fox's jolly associates, there figures a great 
 nobleman, the Duke of Norfolk, called Jockey of Norfolk in his
 
 GEORGE THE FOURTH. 91 
 
 time, and celebrated for his table exploits. He had quarreled 
 with the prince, like the rest of the Whigs ; but a sort of recon- 
 ciliation had taken place ; and now, being a very old man, the 
 prince invited him to dine and sleep at the Pavilion, and the old 
 duke drove over from his Castle of Arundel with his famous 
 equipage of gray horses, still remembered in Sussex. 
 
 The Prince of Wales had concocted with his royal brothers a 
 notable scheme for making the old man drunk. Every person 
 at table was enjoined to drink wine with the duke — a challenge 
 which the old toper did not refuse. He soon began to see that 
 there was a conspiracy against him ; he drank glass for glass ; he 
 overthrew many of the brave. At last the First Gentleman of 
 Europe proposed bumpers of brandy. One of the royal broth- 
 ers filled a great glass for the duke. He stood up and tossed off 
 the drink. " iSTow," says he, " I will have my carriage, and go 
 home." The prince urged upon him his previous promise to 
 sleep under the roof where he had been so generously enter- 
 tained. " No," he said, he had had enough of such hospitality. 
 A trap had been set for him ; he would leave the place at once 
 and never enter its doors more. 
 
 The carriage was called, and came ; but in the half-hour's 
 interval the liquor had proved too potent for the old man ; his 
 host's generous purpose was answered, and the duke's old gray 
 head lay stupefied on the table. Nevertheless, when his post- 
 chaise was announced, he staggered to it as well as he could, 
 and stumbling in, bade the postillions drive to Arundel. They 
 drove him for half an hour round and round the Pavilion lawn ; 
 the poor old man fancied he was going home. When he awoke 
 that morning he was in bed at the prince's hideous house at 
 Brighton. You may see the place now for sixpence : they have 
 fiddlers there every day ; and sometimes buffoons and mounte- 
 banks hire the Riding House and do their tricks and tumbling 
 there. The trees are still there, and the gravel walks round 
 which the poor old sinner was trotted. I can fancy the flushed 
 faces of the royal princes as they support themselves at the por- 
 tico pillars, and look on at old Norfolk's disgrace ; but I can't 
 fancy how the man who perpetrated it continued to be called a 
 gentleman. 
 
 From drinking the pleased Muse now turns to gambling, of 
 which in his youth our prince was a great practitioner. He was
 
 92 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 a famous pigeon for the playmen ; they lived upon him. Egalite 
 Orleans, it was believed, punished him severely. A noble lord, 
 whom we shall call the Marquis of Steyne, is said to have 
 mulcted him in immense sums. He frequented the clubs where 
 play was then almost universal ; and as it was known his debts 
 of honor were sacred, while he was gambling Jews waited out- 
 side to purchase his notes of hand. His transactions on the turf 
 were unlucky as well as discreditable : though I believe he, and 
 his jockey, and his horse Escape, were all innocent in that affair 
 which created so much scandal. 
 
 Arthur's, Almack's, Bootle's, and White's were the chief clubs 
 of the young men of fashion. There was play at all, and de- 
 cayed noblemen and broken-dovra senators fleeced the unwary 
 there. In Selwyn's Letters we find Carlisle, Devonshire, Coven- 
 try, Queensberry, all undergoing the probation. Charles Fox, a 
 dreadful gambler, was cheated in very late times — lost two hun- 
 dred thousand pounds at play. Gibbon tells of his playing for 
 twenty-two hours at a sitting and losing five hundred pounds an 
 hour. That indomitable punster said that the greatest pleasure 
 in life, after winning, was losing. What hours, what nights, 
 what health, did he waste over the devil's books ! I was going 
 to say what peace of mind ; but he took his losses very philo- 
 sophically. After an awful night's play, and the enjoyment of the 
 greatest pleasure but one in Ufe, he was found on a sofa tranquilly 
 reading an Eclogue of Virgil. 
 
 Play survived long after the wild prince and Fox had given 
 up the dice-box. The dandies continued it. Byron, Brummell 
 — how many names could I mention of men of the world who 
 have suflfered by it ! In 1837 occurred a famous trial which 
 pretty nigh put an end to gambling in England. A peer of the 
 realm was found cheating at whist, and repeatedly seen to prac- 
 tice the trick called sauter la coupe. His friends at the clubs saw 
 him cheat, and went on playing with him. One greenhorn, who 
 had discovered his foul play, asked an old hand what he should 
 do. " Do," said the Mammon of Unrighteousness, " Back him, 
 you fool." The best efforts were made to screen him. People 
 wrote him anonymous letters and warned him ; but he would 
 cheat, and they were' obliged to him find out. Since that day, when 
 my lord's shame was made public, the gaming-table has lost all 
 its splendor. Shabby Jews and blacklegs prowl about race-
 
 GEORGE THE FOUETII. 93 
 
 courses and tavern parlors, and now and then inveigle silly 
 yokels with greasy packs of cards in railroad cars ; but Play is 
 a deposed goddess, her worshipers bankrupt, and her table in 
 rags. 
 
 So is another famous British institution gone to decay — the 
 Eing : the noble practice of British boxing, which in my youth 
 was still almost flourishing. 
 
 The prince, in his early days, was a great patron of this 
 national sport, as his grand-uncle Culloden Cumberland had been 
 before him ; but being present at a fight in Brighton, where one 
 of the combatants was killed, the fJrince pensioned the boxer's 
 widow, and declared he never would attend another battle. 
 "But, nevertheless" — I read in the noble language of Pierce 
 Egan (whose smaller work on Pugihsm I have the honor to pos- 
 sess) — " he thought it a manly and decided English feature Avhich 
 ought not to be destroyed. His majesty had a drawing of the 
 sporting characters in the Fives' Court placed in his boudoir, to 
 remind him of his former attachment and support of true courage ; 
 and when any fight of note occurred, after he was king, accounts 
 of it were read to him by his desire." That gives one a fine 
 image of a king taking his recreation — at ease in a royal dress- 
 ing-gown — too ma estic to read himself, ordering the prime min- 
 ister to read him accounts of battles : how Cribb punched Moly- 
 neux's eye, or Jack Randall thrashed the Game Chicken. 
 
 Where my prince did actually distinguish himself was in driv- 
 ing. He drove once in four hours and a half from Brighton to 
 Carlton House — fifty-six miles. All the young men of that day 
 were fond of that sport. But the fashion of rapid driving de- 
 serted England, and, I believe, trotted over to America. Where 
 are the amusements of our youth ? I hear of no gambling now 
 but among obscure ruffians — of no boxing but among the lowest 
 rabble. One solitary four-in-hand still drove round the parks in 
 London last year ; but that charioteer must soon disappear. He 
 was very old ; he was attired after- the fashion of the year 1825. 
 He must drive to the banks of Styx ere long, where the ferry- 
 boat waits to carry him over to the defunct revelers who boxed, 
 and gambled, and drank, and drove with King Grcorge. 
 
 The bravery of the Brunsvvicks, that all the family must have 
 it, that George possessed it, ai'e points which all English writeia 
 have agreed to admit; and yet 1 can not see how George IV.
 
 04 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 should have been endowed with this quahty. Swaddled in 
 feather-beds all his life, lazy, obese, perpetually eating and drink- 
 ing, his education was quite unlike that of his tough old progen- 
 itors. His grandsires had confronted hardship and war, and 
 ridden up and fired their pistols undaunted into the face of death. 
 His father had conquered luxury, and overcome indolence. 
 Here was one who never resisted any temptation ; never had a 
 desire but he coddled and pampered it ; if ever he had any 
 nerve, frittered it away among cooks, and tailors, and barbers, 
 and furniture-mongers, and opera dancers. What muscle would 
 not grow flaccid in such a life — a life that was never strung up 
 to any action — an endless Capua without any campaign — all fid- 
 dling, and flowers, and feasting, and flatterj^, and folly? When 
 George III. was pressed by the Catholic question and the India 
 Bill, he said he would retire to Hanover rather than yield upon 
 either point; and he would have done what he said. But, before 
 yielding, he was determined to fight his ministers and parlia- 
 ment; and he did, and he beat them. The time came when 
 George IV. was pressed too upon the Catholic claims : the cau- 
 tious Peel had slipped over to that side : the grim old Wellington 
 had joined it ; and Peel tells us, in his Memoirs, what was the 
 conduct of the king. He at first refused to submit ; Avhereupon 
 Peel and the duke offered their resignations, which their gracious 
 master accepted. He did these two gentlemen the honor. Peel 
 says, to kiss them both when they went away. (Fancy old Ar- 
 thur's grim countenance and eagle beak as the monarch kisses 
 it!) When they were gone he sent after them, surrendered, and 
 wrote to them a letter begging them to remain in office, and 
 allowing them to have their way. Then his majesty had a meet- 
 ing with Eldon, which is related at curious length in the latter's 
 Memoirs. He told Eldon what was not true about his interview 
 with the new Catholic converts ; utterly misled the old ex-chan- 
 cellor ; cried, whimpered, fell on his neck, and kissed him too. 
 We know old Eldon's own tears were pumped very freely. Did 
 these two fountains gush together? I can't fancy a behavior 
 more unmanly, imbecile, pitiable. This a defender of the faith I 
 This a chief in the crisis of a great nation ! This an inheritor of 
 the courage of the Georges! 
 
 Many of my hearers no doubt have journeyed to the pretty 
 old town of Brunswick, in company with that most worthy,
 
 GEOKGE THE FOURTH. 95 
 
 prudent, and polite gentleman, the Earl of Malmesbury, and 
 fetched away Princess Caroline for her longing husband, the 
 Prince of Wales. Old Queen Charlotte would have had her 
 eldest son marry a niece of her own, the famous Louisa of 
 Strelitz, afterward Queen of Prussia, and who shares with Marie 
 Antoinette in the last age the sad preeminence of beauty and 
 misfortune. But George III. had a niece at Brunswick ; she 
 was a richer princess than her Serene Highness of Strehtz : in 
 fine, the Princess Caroline was selected to marry the heir to 
 the Enghsh throne. We follow my Lord Malmesbury in quest 
 of her ; we are introduced to her illustrious father and royal 
 mother ; we witness the balls and fetes of the old court : we are 
 presented to the princess herself, with her fair hair, her blue eyes, 
 and her impertinent shoulders — a lively, bouncing, romping prin- 
 cess, who takes tiie advice of her courtly Enghsh mentor most 
 generously and kindly. We can be present at her very toilet, if 
 we like, regarding which, and for very good reasons, the British 
 courtier implores her to be particular. What a strange court! 
 What a queer privacy of morals and manners do we look into I 
 Shall we regard it as preachers and moralists, and cry, Woe, 
 against the open vice and selfishness and corruption ; or look at 
 it as we do at the king in the pantomime, with his pantomime 
 wife, and pantomime courtiers, whose big heads he knocks 
 together, whom he pokes with liis pantomime scepter, whom he 
 orders to prison under the guard of his pantomime beef-eaters, 
 as he sits down to dine on his pantomime pudding? It is grave, 
 it is sad, it is theme most curious for moral and political specula- 
 tion ; it is monstrous, gi'otesque, laughable, with its prodigious 
 httlenesses, etiquettes, ceremonials, sham moralities ; it is as se- 
 rious as a sermon, and as absurd and outrageous as Punch's pup- 
 pet-show. 
 
 Malmesbury tells us of the private life of the duke. Princess 
 Caroline's father, who was to die, like his warlike son, in arms 
 against the French ; presents us to his courtiers, his favorite ; his 
 duchess, George III.'s sister, a grim old princess, who took tlie 
 British envoy aside and told him wicked old stories of wicked 
 old dead people and times; who came to England afterwaid 
 when her ncpliew was regent, and lived in a shabby furnished 
 lodging, old, and dingy, and deserted, and grotesque, but some- 
 how royal. And we go with him to the duke to demand tho
 
 96 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 princess's band in form, and we hear the Brunswick guns fire 
 their adieux of salute, as H.R.H. the Princess of Wales departs 
 in the frost and snow ; and we visit the domains of the Prince 
 Bishop of Osnaburg — the Duke of York of our early time ; and 
 we dodge about from the French revolutionists, whose ragged 
 legions are pouring over Holland and Germany, and gayly 
 trampling down the old world to the tune of (;a ira ; and we 
 take shipping at Slade, and we land at Greenwich, where the 
 princess's ladies and the prince's ladies are in waiting to receive 
 her royal highness. 
 
 What a history follows ! Arrived in London, the bridegroom 
 hastened eagerly to receive his bride. When she was first pre- 
 sented to him, Lord Malmesbury says she very properly at- 
 tempted to kneel. He raised her gracefully enougli, embraced 
 her, and turning round to me, said, 
 
 "Harris, I am not well ; pray get me a glass of brandy." 
 I said, " Sir, had you not better have a glass of water ?" 
 Upon which, much out of humor, he said, with an oath, "No; 
 I will go to the queen." 
 
 What could be expected from a wedding which had such a be- 
 ginning — from such a bridegroom and such a bride ? I am not 
 going to carry you through the scandal of that story, or follow 
 the poor princess through all her vagaries; her balls and her 
 dances, her travels to Jerusalem and Naples, her jigs and her 
 junketings and her tears. As I read her trial in history, I vote 
 she is not guilty. I don't say it is an impartial verdict; but as 
 one reads her story the heart bleeds for the kindly, generous, 
 outraged creature. If wrong there be, let it lie at his door who 
 wickedly thrust her from it. Spite of her follies, the great 
 hearty people of England loved, and protected, and pitied her. 
 " God bless you ! we will bring your husband back to you," said 
 a mechanic one day, as she told Lady Charlotte Bury with tears 
 streaming down her cheeks. They could not bring that husband 
 back ; they could not cleanse that selfish heart. Was hers the 
 only one he had wounded ? Steeped in selfishness, impotent for 
 faithful attachment and manly enduring love — had it not sur- 
 vived remorse, was it not accustomed to desertion ? 
 
 Malmesbury gives us the beginning of the marriage story ; — 
 how the prince reeled into chapel to be married ; how he hic- 
 coughed out his vows of fidelity — you know how he kept themj
 
 GEORGE THE FOURTH. 97 
 
 how he pursued the •woman whom he had married ; to what a 
 state he brought her ; with what blows he struck her ; with 
 what mahgnity he pursued her ; what his treatment of his daugh- 
 ter was ; and what his own hfe. He the first gentleman of 
 Europe I There is no stronger satire on the proud EngUsh 
 society of that day than that they admired George. 
 
 No, thank God, we can tell of better gentlemen ; and while 
 our eyes turn away, shocked, from this monstrous image of 
 pride, vanity, weakness, they may see in that England over 
 which the last George pretended to reign some who merit in- 
 deed the title of gentlemen, some who make our hearts beat 
 when we hear their names, and whose memory we fondly salute 
 when that of yonder imperial manikin is tumbled into oblivion. 
 I will take men of my own profession, of letters. I will take 
 Walter Scott, who loved the king, and who was his sword and 
 buckler, and championed him like that brave Highlander in his 
 own story, who fights round his craven chief. What a good 
 gentleman ! What a friendly soul, what a generous hand, 
 what an amiable life was that of the noble Sir Walter ! I 
 will take another man of letters, whose life I admire even 
 more — an English worthy, doing his duty for fifty noble years 
 of labor, day by day storing up learning, day by day work- 
 ing for scant wages, most charitable out of his small means, 
 bravely faithful to the calling which he had chosen, refus- 
 ing to turn from his path for popular praise or prince's favor 
 — I mean Robert Southey. We have left his old pohtical land- 
 marks miles and miles behind : we protest against his dogmat- 
 ism ; nay, we begin to forget it and his pohtics .• but I hope his 
 life will not be forgotten, for it is subhme in its simpUcity, its 
 energy, its honor, its affection. In the combat between Time 
 and Thalaba, I suspect the former destroyer has conquered. 
 Kehama's curse friglitens very few readers now ; but Southey's 
 private letters are worth piles of epics, and are sure to last 
 among us as long as kind hearts like to sympathize with good- 
 ness and purity, and love an upright life. "If your feelings are 
 like mine," he writes to his wife, " I will not go to Lisbon with- 
 out you, or I will stay at home, and not part from you. For 
 though not unhappy when away, still without you I am not 
 happy. For your sake, as well as my own and little Edith's, I 
 will not consent to any separation ; the ^owth of a year's love 
 
 5
 
 98 THE FOUR GEOEGES. 
 
 between her and me, if it please God she should live, is a thing 
 too dehghtful in itself, and too valuable its consequences, to be 
 given up for any light inconvenience on your part or mine. , . 
 On these things we Avill talk at leisure ; only, dear, dear Edith, 
 we must not part /" 
 
 This was a poor literary gentleman. The First Gentleman in 
 Europe had a wife and daughter too. Did he love them so ? 
 Was he faithful to them ? Did he sacrifice ease for them, or show 
 them the sacred examples of religion and honor ? Heaven gave 
 the Great Enghsh Prodigal no such good fortune. Peel proposed 
 to make a baronet of Southey; and to this advancement the 
 king agreed. The poet nobly rejected the oflfered promotion. 
 
 " I have," he wrote, " a pension of two hundred pounds a 
 year, conferred upon me by the good offices of my old friend C. 
 Wynn, and I have the laureateship. The salary of the latter was 
 immediately appropriated, as far as it went, to a life-insurance 
 of three thousand pounds, which, with an earUer insurance, 13 
 the sole provision I have made for my family. AU beyond must 
 be derived from my own industry. Writing for a livelihood, a 
 livelihood is all that I have gained ; for, having also something 
 better in view, and never, therefore, having courted popularity, 
 nor written for the mere sake of gain, it has not been possible 
 for me to lay by any thing. Last year, for the first time in my 
 life, I was provided with a year's expenditure beforehand. This 
 exposition may show how unbecoming and unwise it would be 
 to accept the rank which, so greatly to my honor, you have 
 solicited for me." 
 
 How noble his poverty is compared to the wealth of his 
 master ! His acceptance even of a pension was made the object 
 of his opponents' satire : but think of the merit and modesty of 
 this State pensioner ; and that other enormous drawer of public 
 money, who receives one hundred thousand pounds a year, and 
 comes to Pariiament with a request for six hundred and fifty 
 thousand pounds more ! 
 
 Another true knight of those days was Cuthbert Collingwood ; 
 and I think, since Heaven made gentlemen, there is no record of 
 a better one than that. Of brighter deeds, I grant you, we may 
 read performed by others ; but where of a nobler, kinder, more 
 beautiful life of duty, of a gentler, truer heart ? Beyond dazzle 
 of success and blaze of genius, I fancy shining a hundred and a
 
 GEOKGE THE FOURTH. 99 
 
 hundred times higher the sublime purity of CoUingwood's gentle 
 glory. His heroism stirs British hearts when we recall it. His 
 love, and goodness, and piety make one thrill with happy emo- 
 tion. As one reads of him and his great comrade going into 
 the victory with which their names are immortally connected, 
 how the old English word comes up, and that old English feel- 
 ing of what I should like to call Christian honor I What gentle- 
 men they were, what great hearts they had ! " AVe can, my 
 dear Coll," writes Nelson to him, " have no httle jealousies ; we 
 have only one great object in view — that of meeting the enemy, 
 and getting a glorious peace for our country." At Trafalgar, 
 when the Royal Sovereign was pressing alone into the midst of 
 the combined fleets, Lord Nelson said to Captain Blackwood, 
 " See how that noble feUow, Collingwood, takes his ship into 
 action ! How I envy him !" The very same throb and impulse 
 of heroic generosity was beating in CoUingwood's honest bosom. 
 As he led into the fight, he said, " What would Nelson give to 
 be here I" 
 
 After the action of the 1st of June he writes : " We cruised 
 for a few days, like disappointed people looking for what they 
 could not find, until the morning of little Sarah's lirthday, between 
 eight and nine o'clock, when the French fleet, of twenty-five sail 
 of the line, was discovered to windward. We chased them, and 
 they bore down within about five miles of us. The night was 
 spent in watching and preparation for the succeeding day ; and 
 many a blessing did I send forth to my Sarah, lest I should never 
 bless her more. At dawn we made our approach on the enemy, 
 then drew up, dressed our ranks, and it was about eight when 
 the admiral made the signal for each sliip to engage her oppo- 
 nent, and bring her to close action ; and then down we went 
 imder a crowd of sail, and in a manner that would have animated 
 the coldest heart, and struck terror into the most intrepid enemy. 
 The ship we were to engage was two ahead of the French ad- 
 miral, so that we had to go through his fire and that of two ships 
 next to him, and received all their broadsides, two or three times, 
 before we fired a gun. It was then near ten o'clock. I observed 
 to the admiral, that about that time our wives were going to 
 church, but that I thought the peal we should ring about the 
 Frenchman's ears would outdo their parish bells." 
 
 There are no words to tell what the heart feels in reading the
 
 100 THE FOUE GEORGES. 
 
 simple phrases ot sucli a hero. Here is victory and courage, but 
 love sublimer and superior. Here is the Christian soldier spend- 
 ing the night before battle in watching and preparing for the 
 succeeding day, thinking of his dearest home, and sending many 
 blessings forth to his Sarah, " lest he should never bless her 
 more." Who would not say Amen to his supplication ? It was 
 a benediction to his country — the prayer of that intrepid, loving 
 heart. 
 
 We have spoken of a good soldier and good men of letters as 
 specimens of Enghsh gentlemen of the age just past : may we 
 not also — many of my elder hearers, I am sure, have read, and 
 fondly remember his delightful story — speak of a good divine, 
 and mention Reginald Heber as one of the best of English gen- 
 tlemen ? The charming poet, the happy possessor of all sorts of 
 gifts and accomplishments, birth, wit, fame, high character, com- 
 petence — he was the beloved parish priest in his own home of 
 Hoderel, " counsehng his people in their troubles, advising them 
 in their difficulties, comforting them in distress, kneeling often at 
 their sick beds at the hazard of his own life ; exhorting, encourag- 
 ing where there was need ; where there was strife the peace- 
 maker ; where there was want the firee giver." 
 
 When the Indian bishopric was offered to him he refused at 
 first ; but after communing with himself (and committing his case 
 to the quarter whither such pious men are wont to carry their 
 doubts), he withdrew his refusal, and prepared himself for his 
 mission, and to leave his beloved parishi " Little children, love 
 one another, and forgive one another," were the last sacred words 
 he" said to his weeping people. He parted with them, knowing, 
 perhaps, he should see them no more. Like those other good 
 men of whom we have just spoken, love and duty were his hfe's 
 aim. Happy he, happy they who were so gloriously faithful to 
 both! He writes to his wife those charming lines on his 
 jcm-ney : 
 
 " If thou, my love, wert by my side, 
 My babies at my knee, 
 How gladly would our pinnace glide 
 O'er Gunga's mimic sea! 
 
 •' I miss thee at the dawning gray, 
 When, on our deck reclined, 
 In careless ease my limbs I lay 
 And woo the cooler wind.
 
 GEORGE THE FOURTH. 101 
 
 " I miss thee when by Gunga's stream 
 My twilight steps I guide ; 
 But most beneath the lamp's pale beam 
 I miss thee by my side. 
 
 "I spread my books, my pencil try, 
 The lingering noon to cheer ; 
 But miss thy liind, approving eye, 
 Thy meek, attentive ear. 
 
 " But when of morn and eve the star 
 Beholds me on my knee, 
 I feel, though thou art distant far, 
 Thy prayers ascend for me. 
 
 " Then on, then on, where duty leads 
 My course be onward still — 
 O'er broad Hindostan's sultry meads, 
 O'er bleak Almorah's hilL 
 
 "That course nor Delhi's kingly gates, 
 Nor wild Malwah detain, 
 For sweet the bliss us both awaits 
 By yonder western main. 
 
 "Thy towers, Bombay, gleam bright, they say. 
 Across the dark blue sea; 
 But ne'er were hearts so blithe and gay 
 As there shall meet in thee !" 
 
 Is it not Collingwood and Sarah, and Southey and Edith ? His 
 affection is part of his life. What were hfe -without it ? Without 
 love, I can fancy no gentleman. 
 
 How touching is a remark Heber makes in his Travels through 
 India, that on inquiring of the natives at a town which of the 
 governors of India stood highest in the opinion of the people, he 
 found that though Lord Wellesley and Warren Hastings were 
 honored as the two greatest men who ever ruled this part of the 
 world, the people spoke with chief affection of Judge Cleaveland, 
 who had died, aged twenty-nine, in 1784. The people have 
 built a monument over him, and still hold a religious feast in his 
 memory. So does his own country still tend with a heart's 
 regard the memory of the gentle Heber. 
 
 And Cleaveland died in 1784, and is still loved by the heathen, 
 is he? Why, that year 1784 was remarkable in the life of our 
 friend the First Grcntleman of Europe. Do you not know that 
 he was twenty-one in that year, and opened Carlton House witli 
 a grand ball to the nobility and gentry, and doubtless wore that
 
 102 THE FOUK GEORGES. 
 
 lovely pink coat which we have described. I was eager to 
 read about the ball, and looked to the old magazines for infor- 
 mation. The entertainment took place on the 10th February. 
 In the European Magazine of March, 178-4, I came straightway 
 upon it : 
 
 " The alterations at Carlton House being finished, we lay 
 before our readers a description of the state apartments as they 
 appeared on the 10th instant, when H.R.H. gave a grand ball to 
 
 the principal nobility and gentry The entrance to the 
 
 state room fi.lls the mind with an inexpressible idea of greatness 
 and splendor. 
 
 '' The state chair is of a gold frame, covered with crimson 
 damask ; on each corner of the feet is a Hon's head, expressive 
 of fortitude and strength ; the feet of the chair have serpents 
 twining round them, to denote wisdom. Facing the throne 
 appears the helmet of Minerva ; and over the windows glory is 
 represented by a Saint George with a superb gloria. 
 
 " But the saloon may be styled the chef-cT a:icvre, and in every 
 ornament discovers great invention. It is hung with a figured 
 lemon satin. The window curtains, sofas, and chairs are of the 
 same color. The ceiling is ornamented with emblematical paint- 
 ings, representing the Graces and Muses, together with Jupiter, 
 Mercury, ApoUo, and Paris. Two ormolu chandeliers are placed 
 here. It is impossible by expression to do justice to the extra- 
 ordinary workmanship, as well as design, of the ornaments. 
 They each consist of a pabn, branching out in five directions for 
 the reception of lights. A beautiful figure of a rural nymph is 
 represented entwining the stems of the tree with wreaths of 
 flowers. In the center of the room is a rich chandelier. To see 
 this apartment dans son plus heau jour, it should be viewed in 
 the glass over the chimney-piece. The range of apartments from 
 the saloon to the ball-room, when the doors are open, formed 
 one of the grandest spectacles that ever was beheld." 
 
 In the Gentleman s Magazine, for the very same month and 
 year — March, 1784 — is an account of another festival, in which 
 another great gentleman of English extraction is represented as 
 laking a principal share : 
 
 " According to order, H.E. the Commander-in-Chief was 
 ■ iilmitted to a public audience of Congress; and, being seated, 
 (he president, after a pause, informed him that the United State3
 
 GEORGE THE FOUETH. 103 
 
 assembled were ready to receive his communications. Where- 
 upon he arose, and spoke as follows : 
 
 " ' Mr. President, — The great events on which my resignation 
 depended having at length taken place, I present myself before 
 Congress to surrender into their hands the trust committed to 
 me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring frdbi the service of 
 my country. 
 
 " ' Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sove- 
 reignty, I resign the appointment I accepted with diffidence; 
 which, however, was superseded by a confidence in the rectitude 
 of our cause, the support of the supreme power of the nation, 
 and the patronage of Heaven. I close this last act of my official 
 life, by commending the interests of our dearest country to the 
 protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superin- 
 tendence of them to His holy keeping. Having finished the 
 work assigned me, I retire from the great theater of action ; and, 
 bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose 
 orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission and take 
 my leave of the employments of my public life.' To which the 
 president rephed : 
 
 " ' Sir, having defended the standard of liberty in the New 
 World, having taught a lesson useful to those who inflict, and 
 those who feel oppression, you retire with the blessings of your 
 fellow-citizens ; though the glory of your virtues will not termi- 
 nate with your mihtary command, but will descend to remotest 
 ages.' " 
 
 Which was the most splendid spectacle ever witnessed — the 
 opening feast of Prince George in London, or the resignation of 
 Washington ? Which is the noble character for after-ages to 
 admire — yon fribble dancing in lace and spangles, or yonder hero 
 who sheathes his sword after a life of spotless honor, a purity 
 unreproached, a courage indomitable, and a consummate vic- 
 tory ? Which of these is the true gentleman ? What is it to be 
 a gentleman ? Is it to have lofty aims, to lead a pure life, to 
 keep your honor virgin ; to have the esteem of your fellow-citi- 
 zens, and the love of your fireside ; to bear good fortune meekly ; 
 to suffer evil with constancy ; and through evil or good to main- 
 tain truth always ? Show me the happy man whose life exhibits 
 these qualities, and him we will salute as gentleman, whatever 
 his rank may be ; show me the prince who possesses them, and
 
 104 THE FOUK GEOKGES. 
 
 he may be sure of our love and loyalty. The heart of Britain 
 still beats kindly for George III. — not because he was wise and 
 just, but because he was pure in life, honest in intent, and 
 because according to his lights he worshiped Heaven. I think 
 we acknowledge in the inheritrix of his scepter a wiser rule and 
 a life as honorable and pure ; and I am sure the future painter 
 of our manners will pay a willing allegiance to that good life, 
 and be loyal to the memory of that unsulUed virtue. 
 
 THE END.
 
 HOME INSURANCE COMPANY 
 
 OF NEW YOUK. 
 
 OFFICE, 112 & 114 BROADWAY. 
 
 This Company continues to insure Buildings, Furniture, etc., against 
 Loss or Damage by Fire, on favorable terms. 
 
 Cash Capital One Million Dollars. 
 
 Assets, July 1, 1860 $1,481,819.27 
 
 Liabilities 54,058.67 
 
 DIRECTORS. 
 
 ■William G. Lambert, 
 George C. Collins, 
 Danford N. Barney, 
 Ltrcius Hopkins, 
 Thomas Messenger, 
 "William H. Mellen, 
 Charles J. Martin, 
 Charles B. Hatch, 
 B. Watson Bull, 
 Homer Morgan, 
 Levi P. Stone, 
 James Humphrey, 
 George Pearce, 
 Ward A. "Work, 
 James Low, 
 A. J. Wills, 
 William H. Townsend, 
 L H. Frothinqham, 
 Charles A. Bulkley, 
 Eichard Bigelow, 
 George D. Morgan, 
 Theo. McNamee, 
 Cephas H. Norton, 
 
 Oliver E. Wood, 
 Alfred S. Barnes, 
 George Bliss, 
 Roe Lockwood, 
 Levi P. Morton, 
 Curtis Noble, 
 John B. Hutchinson, 
 Samuel B. Caldwell, 
 Charles P. Baldwin, 
 Amos D. Dwight, 
 H. A. Hurlbut, 
 Jesse Hoyt, 
 William Sturgis, Jr. 
 John R. Ford, 
 George T. Stedman, 
 Sidney Mason, 
 
 A. F. WiLMARTH, 
 
 Cyrus Yale, Jr., 
 f. h. cossitt, 
 w. r. fosdick, 
 David I. Boyd, 
 Lewis Roberts. 
 
 CHARLES J. MARTIN, PresidenL 
 A. F. WILMARTH, Vice-Presideni. 
 
 J. Milton Smith, Secretary. 
 John McGee, Assistant Sea 
 
 etary.
 
 THE METROPOLITAN 
 
 FIRE IlfSURANCE COMPANY, 
 
 NO. 108 BROADWAY, CORNER OF PINE ST. 
 
 CASH CAPITAI., $300,000. 
 
 This Company, having a Cash Capital exceeded by those of only 
 three other City Companies, continues to insure all kinds of 
 
 PSRSOIT/lLt PROPERTY, BUILDUTGS, 
 
 SHIPS IN PORT AND THEIR CARGOES, 
 
 On terms as low as are consistent with the security of the Insurers and 
 Insured. 
 
 DIRECTORS. 
 
 JAMES LORIMER GRAHAM, President. 
 
 Joseph B. Varnum, 
 Leokard Appleby, 
 Frederick H. Wolcott, 
 William K. Stroxg, 
 Moses Taylor, 
 Jakes 0. Sheldon, 
 Daniel Parish, 
 gustavcs a. conover, 
 Martin Bates, Jr., 
 Dudley B. Fuller, 
 Charles L. Vose, 
 
 Samuel D. 
 
 "Warren Delano, Jr., 
 Henry V. Butler, 
 Joseph B. Varnum, Jr., 
 James Lorimer Graham, Jr., 
 Bowes R. McIltaine, 
 Gilbert L. Beeckman, 
 John C. Henderson, 
 LoRRAiN Freeman, 
 Edward Macombe, 
 "Watson E. Case, 
 Charles E. Appleby, 
 Bradford, Jr. 
 
 EDWARD A. STANSBURY, Secretary. 
 ROBERT C RATHBONE, Assistant Secretary.
 
 GROYER & BAKER'S 
 
 CELEBRATED NOISELESS 
 
 FAMILY SEWING MACHINES, 
 
 495 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 
 
 THE GROVER & BAKER MACHINE 
 
 Is simple in construction, easily learned, and, witli proper manage- 
 ment, never gets out of order. 
 
 THE GROVER & BAKER MACHINE 
 
 Hems, Fells, Gatliers, and Stitches, and Fastens its own Seams, thereby 
 savLag time and thread. 
 
 THE GROVER & BAKER MACHINE 
 
 Sews equally well on all Fabrics, from the finest Swiss Muslin to thx. 
 heaviest cloth or leather. 
 
 THE GROVER & BAKER MACHINE 
 
 Sews from original Spools without rewinding, and forms a scam unsur- 
 passed for beauty, elasticity, and strength. 
 
 THE GROVER & BAKER STITCH 
 
 Is the Double Lock Stitch which forms a seam that will not rip even 
 if every fourth stitch is cut. It is the only stitch that survives the 
 washing-tub on bias seams. 
 
 THE GROVER & BAKER MACHINE 
 
 Makes the only seam formed by a Sewing ixachine, in which each 
 stitch is independently locked, and without dependence upon the other 
 stitches for strength. 
 
 OFFICES OF EXHIBITION AND SALE. 
 
 495 Broadway, New York. 18 Summer-st., Boston. 730 Chestnut- 
 st., Philadelphia. 181 Baltimore-st., Baltimore. 58 West Fourth-st., 
 Cincinnati. 124 North Fourth-st., St. Louis. 115 Lako-st, Chicago. 
 171 Superior-st, Cleveland. 
 
 C^ SEND FOR A CIRCn.AR. .J^
 
 AVER'S CATHARTIC PILLS, 
 
 FOR THE CURE OF 
 
 Costiveness, Jaundice, Dyspepsia, Indigestion, Dysentery, 
 Foul Stomach, Erysipelas, Headache, Piles, Kheuma- 
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 plaint, Dropsy, Tetter, Tumors and Salt Rheum, 
 Worms, Gout, Neuralgia, as a Dinner 
 Pill, and for Purifying the Blood. 
 
 Are you sick, feeble, and complaining? Are you out of order, with your system 
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 rangements, t.ake AYEK'S PILLS, and see how directly they restore the natural 
 action of the system, and with it the buoyant feeling of health again. What is 
 true and so apparent in this trivial and common complaint, is also true in many 
 of the deep-seated and dangerous distempers. The same purgative effect expels 
 tliem. Caused by similar obstructions and derangements of the natural functions 
 of the body, they are rapidly, and manvof them surely, cured by tlie same means. 
 None who know the virtues of these Pills will neglect to employ them when suf- 
 fering from tlie disorders they cure. 
 
 Deafness, Partial Blindness, Fits, Paralysis, or Palsy, St. Vitus's Dance, 
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 Tliey are not only the best, but they are the cheapest Pill there is sold, be- 
 cause In them the consumer gets the most for his money. 
 
 Unprincipled dealers may try to urge upon you other Pills they may make more 
 profit on ; but do not be misled. Ask for AYKK'S CATHAKTIC PILLS, and 
 take no others. 
 
 Price 25 cents per DBox, or Five Boxes for $1. 
 
 From six, physicians of distinguished abilities and the highest standing in the 
 
 central city of Neiu York. 
 
 Syracuse, 11th May, 1S54. 
 
 "Dr. Ayer: — We have given your Cathartic Pills a thorough trial in our 
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 Verv truly yours, 
 M. M. White, M.D. A. B. Shipman, M.D. II. B. Moore, M.D. 
 
 J. F. Trowbridge, M.D. Jas. C. Stewart, M.D. M. W. Williams, M.D. 
 
 AVER'S CHERRY PECTORAL, 
 
 For the rapid cure of Coughs, Colds, Influenza, Hoarseness, Croup, 
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 Prepared by DR. J. C. AYER & CO., Lowell, Mass. 
 
 Sold at Wholesale and Retail by all Dealers in Medicine everywhere.
 
 WHEELER & WiLSOH'S 
 
 WITH IMPORTANT IMPROVgyiEHTS, AT GREATLY REDUCED PRICES. 
 
 These great Economizers of Time, and Preservers of Health, 
 
 Hare won the highest premiums at 
 the Fair of the United Agricultural 
 Society ; at the State Fairs of Maine, 
 Vermont, Connecticut, New York, 
 Xew Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, 
 Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, 
 Tlhnois, Kentucky, Michigan, "Wiscon- 
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 American Institute, New York; Me- 
 chanics' Association, Boston ; Franklin 
 Institute, Philadelphia ; Mechanics' 
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 hundreds of County Fairs. 
 
 OFFICE, 505 BROAD^VAl^', W. Y. 
 
 The Lock Stitch made by this Machine is the only stitch that can not 
 be raveled, and that presents the same appearance each side of the 
 seam. It is made with two threads, one upon each side of the fabric, 
 and interlocked in the center of it. 
 
 ECONOMY OF SEWING MACHINES. 
 
 The Wheeler & Wilson Sewing Machine Company has prepared 
 Tables, shQwing, by actual experiment of four different workers, the 
 time required to stitch each part of a garment by hand, and with their 
 Sewing Machine. The superiority of the work done by the Machine, 
 and the healthfulnessof the employment, are advantages quite as great 
 as the saving of time. Subjoined is a summary of several of the tables : 
 
 BY MACllINK. BY HAND. 
 
 //'/•*. MMs. irrs. M''n'». 
 
 BY MACHINE. BY HAND. 
 
 Il'rs. Jlin'ii. Wrs. Mill's. 
 
 Gent's Shirts 
 Frock Coats 
 Satin Vests 
 Linen " 
 Cloth Pants 
 Summer " 
 Silk Dress. . 
 Merino Dress . 
 
 16 
 38 
 14 
 48 
 51 
 38 
 13 
 4 
 
 26 
 35 
 19 
 14 
 10 
 50 
 22 
 27 
 
 Calico Dress. . . 
 
 Chemise 
 
 Moreen Skirt . . 
 Muslin " . , 
 Night Dress.. 
 
 Drawers 
 
 Silk Apron.. . . 
 Plain " ... 
 
 57 
 
 1 
 
 35 
 
 30 
 
 7 
 
 28 
 
 15 
 
 9 
 
 6 
 10 
 7 
 6 
 10 
 5 
 4 
 1 
 
 37 
 
 31 
 
 28 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 16 
 
 26 
 
 Seams of any considerable length are stitched, ordinarily, at 
 the rate of a yard a minute.
 
 It 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 775 494 
 
 I
 
 HOME INSURANCE COAIPANY] 
 
 • OF NEW YORK. 
 
 OFFICE, .112 & 114 BROADWAY. 
 
 This Company ccj' tiauesto insure Building.^, Furaiture, etc., a^j 
 Loss or Damage by J'ire, ou favorable terms. 
 
 CasK Capital One Million Dollars.) 
 
 Assets. July I, 1860 $1,481,819.2': 
 
 Liabilities 54,058.6': 
 
 Li oS C T O E. S 
 
 TViLMAii G. Lambert, 
 George C. Collins, 
 Danford N. Barxey, 
 Lucius Hopkins, 
 Thomas IiIcssexger, 
 William H. Melle:?, 
 
 CflARLKS J. jlAi.ri>, 
 
 Charles B. Hatch, 
 B. Watson Bull, 
 Homer Morgan, 
 Levi P. Stone, 
 James Hcmpurev, 
 George P^vrce, 
 Ward A. WoPwK, 
 James Low, 
 A. J. Wills, 
 William H. TowarsENc, 
 
 L n. Fi.OTHlNOnAK, 
 
 Charles A. Bulklet, 
 Richard Bigelow, 
 George D. Morgan, 
 Theo. McX vmee, 
 Cephas H. Xorto.v. 
 
 Oliver E. Wood, 
 Alfred S. Barnes, 
 George Bliss, 
 Roe Lockwood, 
 Levi P. Morton, 
 Curtis Noble, 
 John B. Hutchinson, 
 Samuel B. Caldwell, 
 Charles P. Baldwin, 
 a mos d. dwight, 
 H. a. Hurleut, 
 Jesse Hott, 
 William Sturgis, Jr. 
 .John E. Ford, 
 GBonoE T. Stedman, 
 Sidney Mason, 
 A. F. Wilmarth, 
 Ctrus Yale, Jr., 
 F. H. COSSITT, 
 W. R. FOSDICK, 
 
 David L Botd, 
 Lewis Roberts. 
 
 CHARLES J. MARTIN, Presidet 
 A. F. WILMARTH, Vke-Presidel 
 
 J. Milton Smith, Secretary. 
 John McGee, Assistant ?Kcretonj.