a coldness between the King and the Prince, but this was the first occasion in which it had broken out into act. It was supposed by many, that the King was displeased with the circumstance of the Prince having thought proper to discard his household, without having consulted the inclination of his father, or demanded his consent. It was also supposed that the King participated in the feelings of the majority of his subjects respecting Mrs. Fitzherbert. The rumour of the pretended marriage might probably have originated in a very low and insignificant source; but it is of the nature of rumour to increase, if it be not contradicted by the person to whom it immediately relates. In the present

case there were reasons for not contradicting it. The pride of the lady's family, the delicacy due to herself, seemed to require that a certain degree

of mystery and silence should rest upon the transaction. There were few people in Great Britain who knew the falsehood of the rumour; and there were few by whom it was not in good earnest believed. It is even probable, from the coldness and distance that had for some time subsisted, that the King himself was not uninformed upon the subject.

"This open rupture between the Prince and his father filled up the measure of the son's unpopularity. The experienced and the sage took part against him. The domestic character of the King was well known, and was an object of general respect. It was not probable, they said, that the father should fail in paternal kindness to his son, though it was very possible that the son might fail in filial duty to his father. They affirmed, that, in a quarrel between the two, the son was

always in the wrong; and they predicted the most calamitous events as the result of this breach. They looked back to the history of the two preceding reigns, and they believed that something more bitter, more inveterate, and more injurious to government and the people would spring up now than in any former instances."

As the dissentions which existed between former heirs apparent and the possessors of the British crown are perhaps, at this distant day, not generally known, we shall give a brief account of them, taken with such care, from sources that can be relied on, that no doubt need be entertained of their authenticity. The coldness between George I. and his son and successor George II. may be said to have been almost coeval with the existence of the latter. It is generally thought to have originated in jealousy; and that

George I. suspecting an intrigue between his consort, the Princess of Zelle, and Count Konigsmerk, who had rendered himself infamous in England by the murder of Mr. Thynne on Westminster-bridge, caused the latter to be assassinated as he was coming out of the princess's apartments, and confined his wife during the remainder of her days in a solitary castle not far from Hanover. Whether George I. suspected the legitimacy of his son is a point which probably will always be buried in oblivion; but it is certain that he always treated him with great coolness, and occasionally with considerable severity. The prince at one time having under the impulse of natural effection attempted to gain access to his mother's person, he was taken into custody by the soldiers who guarded her place of confinement, and ordered by his father to be imprisoned,

More rigorous steps would probably have followed, but the Emperor of Germany reclaimed the young prince as a prince of the empire; and he was soon afterwards sent into a sort of honourable banishment, by being permitted to make a campaign with the emperor's armies on the banks of the Danube. But from this time not merely a mutual coolness but an evident dislike subsisted between George I. and his successor. The wife of George I. lived some years after the accession of that prince to the British throne, but that event made no alteration whatever in her situation, and when she died, which was before her husband, after a long and rigorous imprisonment of many years continuance, no public mourning was ordered on account of her death, and it was announced under the simple title of