-- ters, officers of state; he kidnapped big men all Europe over to make grenadiers of; his feasts, his parades, his wine parties, his tobacco parties, are all described. Jonathan Wild the great in language, pleasures, and behavior, is scarcely more delicate 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 little 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 Germans and his queen. With us English, 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 than 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 companions. Had he been more of a dupe, he might have been more amiable. A dismal experience made him 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, sceptical 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 afterwards in his own ancient kingdom 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 gencral, 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 which 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, dismounting 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 famous pluck and spirit. In 45, when the Pretender 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 stuff!" 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 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 manner, 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 temper, 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 Protestanism for the other creed, although an Archduke, afterwards to be an Emperor, was offered to her for a bridegroom. IIer 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 skilful Jesuit, and famous winner of souls. But she routed the Jesuit; and she refused Charles VI.; and she married the little Electoral Prince of Hanover, 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 even at Dettingen, where he fought so braveagain conferred on the Prince of Wales; he ly, his figure is absurd-calling out in his and his father fell out presently. On the broken English, and lunging with his rapier, occasion of the christening of his second son, like a fencing-master. In contemporary caria royal row took place, and the prince, shak-catures, George's son, "the hero of Culloden," ing his fist in the Duke of Newcastle's face, is also made an object of considerable fun. called him a rogue, and provoked his august I refrain to quote from Walpole regarding father. He and his wife were turned out of George, for those charming volumes are in St. James's, and their princely children taken the hands of all who love the gossip of the from them, by order of the royal head of the last century. Nothing can be more cheery family. Father and mother wept piteously at than Horace's letters. Fiddles sing all parting from their little ones. The young through them: wax-lights, fine dresses, fine ones sent some cherries, with their love, to jokes, fine plate, fine equipages, glitter and papa and mamma; the parents watered the sparkle there: never was such a brilliant, fruit with tears. They had no tears thirty- jigging, smirking Vanity Fair as that through five years afterwards, when Prince Freder- which he leads us. Hervey, the next great ick died, their eldest son, their heir, their authority, is a darker spirit. About him there enemy. is something frightful: a few years since his The king called his daughter-in-law "cette heirs opened the lid of the Ickworth box; it diablesse madame la princesse." The frequent- was as if a Pompeii was opened to us; the ers of the latter's court were forbidden to last century dug up, with its temples and its appear at the king's: their royal highnesses games, its chariots, its public places-lupangoing to Bath, we read how the courtiers fol- aria. Wandering through that city of the lowed them thither, and paid that homage in dead, that dreadfully selfish time, through Somersetshire which was forbidden in Lon- those godless intrigues and feasts, through don. That phrase of "cette diablesse madame those crowds, pushing, and eager, and strugla princesse," explains one cause of the wrath gling-rouged, and lying, and fawning-I of her royal papa. She was a very clever have wanted some one to be friends with. I woman she had a keen sense of humor: she have said to friends conversant with that hishad a dreadful tongue: she turned into ridi- tory, "Show me some good person about that cule the antiquated sultan and his hideous court; find me, among those selfish courtiers, harem. She wrote savage letters about him those dissolute, gay people, some one being home to members of her family. So, driven that I can love and regard. There is that out from the royal presence, the prince and strutting little sultan, George II.; there is that princess set up for themselves in Leicester hunchbacked, beetle-browed Lord ChesterFields, "where," says Walpole, "the most field; there is John Hervey, with his deadly promising of the young gentlemen of the next smile, and ghastly, painted face; I hate them. party, and the prettiest and liveliest of the There is Hoadly, cringing from one bishopric young ladies, formed the new court." Be- to another: yonder comes little Mr. Pope, sides Leicester House, they had their lodge from Twickenham, with his friend, the Irish at Richmond, frequented by some of the dean, in his new cassock, bowing too, but pleasantest company of those days. There with rage flashing from under his bushy eyewere the Herveys, and Chesterfield, and little brows, and scorn and hate quivering in his Mr. Pope from Twickenham, and with him, smile. Can you be fond of these? Of Pope sometimes, the savage Dean of St. Patrick's, I might: at least I might love his genius, his and quite a bevy of young ladies, whose pret- wit, his greatness, liis sensibility, with a certy faces smile on us out of history. There tain conviction that at some fancied slight, was Lepell, famous in ballad song; and the some sneer which he imagined, he would turn saucy, charming Mary Bellenden, who would upon me and stab me. Can you trust the have none of the Prince of Wales' fine com- queen? She is not of our order: their very pliments, who folded her arms across her position makes kings and queens lonely. One breast, and bade H. R. H. keep off; and inscrutable attachment that inscrutable wo knocked his purse of guineas into his face, man has. To that she is faithful, through all and told him she was tired of seeing him trial, neglect, pain, and time. Save her huscount them. He was not an august monarch, band, she really cares for no created being. this Augustus. Walpole tells us how, one She is good enough to her children, and even night at the royal card-table, the playful princess 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; 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 depart, she will be as perfectly kind and gracious to the 66 sycophancies-all uttered in the name of Heaven in our State churches: these monstrous threnodies have been sung from time immemorial over kings and queens, good, bad, wicked, 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 whilst living, and when dead, perform the obsequies of "our most religious and gracious king." 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. What charm had the little man? What was there in those wonderful letters of thirty 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 I read that Lady Yarmouth (my most reprincess of Germany, take a little red-faced ligious and gracious king's favorite) sold a staring princeling for a husband, and refuse bishopric to a clergyman for £5000. (She an emperor? Why, to her last hour, did she betted him £5000 that he would not be made love him so? She killed herself because she a bishop, and he lost, and paid her.) Was loved him so. She had the gout, and would he the only prelate of his time led up by such plunge her feet in cold water in order to walk hands for consecration? As I peep into with him. With the film of death over her George II's St. James's, I see crowds of caseyes, writhing in intolerable pain, she yet had socks rustling up the back-stairs of the ladies a livid smile and a gentle word for her mas- of the Court; stealthy clergy slipping purses ter. You have read the wonderful history of into their laps; that godless old king yawnthat death-bed? How she bade him marry ing under his canopy in his Chapel Royal, as again, and the reply the old king blubbered the chaplain before him is discoursing. Disout, Non, non: j'aurai des maîtresses." coursing about what? about righteousness There never was such a ghastly farce. I and judgment? Whilst the chaplain is watch the astonishing scene-I stand by that preaching, the king is chattering in German awful bedside, wondering at the ways in which almost as loud as the preacher; so loud that God has ordained the lives, loves, rewards, the preacher - it may be one Dr. Young, he successes, passions, actions, ends of his crea- who wrote Night Thoughts, and discoursed on tures and can't but laugh, in the presence the splendors of the stars, the glories of of death, and with the saddest heart. In that heaven, and utter vanities of this worldoften-quoted passage from Lord Hervey, in actually burst out crying in his pulpit bewhich the queen's death-bed is described, the cause the defender of the faith and dispenser grotesque horror of the details surpasses all of bishoprics would not listen to him! No satire: the dreadful humor of the scene is wonder that the clergy were corrupt and inmore terrible than Swift's blackest pages, or different amidst this indifference and corrupFielding's fiercest irony. The man who wrote tion. No wonder that sceptics multiplied and the story had something diabolical about him: morals degenerated, so far as they depended the terrible verses which Pope wrote respect- on the influence of such a king. No wonder ing Hervey, in one of his own moods of al- that Whitefield cried out in the wilderness, most fiendish malignity, I fear are true. I that Wesley quitted the insulted temple to am frightened as I look back into the past, pray on the hill-side. I look with reverence and fancy I behold that ghastly, beautiful on those men at that time. Which is the face; as I think of the queen writhing on her sublimer spectacle the good John Wesley, death-bed, and crying out, "Pray!-pray!" surrounded by his congregation of miners at of the royal old sinner by her side, who kisses the pit's mouth, or the queen's chaplains her dead lips with frantic grief, and leaves mumbling through their morning office in her to sin more; of the bevy of courtly cler- their ante-room, under the picture of the gymen, and the archbishop, whose prayers great Venus, with the door opened into the she rejects, and who are obliged, for proprie- adjoining chamber, where the queen is dressty's sake, to shuffle off the anxious inquiries of ing, talking scandal to Lord Hervey, or utthe public, and vow that her majesty quitted tering sneers at Lady Suffolk, who is kneelthis life in a heavenly frame of mind." ing with the basin at her mistress's side? I What a life!to what ends devoted! What say I am scared as I look round at this soa vanity of vanities! It is a theme for an-ciety at this king, at these courtiers, at other pulpit than the lecturer's. For a pul- these politicians, at these bishops at this pit? I think the part which pulpits play in flaunting vice and levity. Whereabouts in the deaths of kings is the most ghastly of all this Court is the honest man? Where is the the ceremonial: the lying eulogies, the blink- pure person one may like? The air stifles ing of disagreeable truths, the sickening flat- one with its sickly perfumes. There are some teries, the simulated grief, the falsehoods and old world follies and some absurd ceremoni 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 that's most uncommon — Envy, be silent, and attend! als 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 sovereign, wise, moderate, exemplary of life; the good mother; the good wife; the accomplished lady; the enlightened 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 lit- And exquisite soft melancholy. tle traits which go to prove the charms of her "Has she no faults, then (Envy says), sir? character (it is not merely because she is Yes, she has one, I must avercharming, but because she is characteristic, When all the world conspires to praise her, that I allude to her). She writes delightfully The woman's deaf, and does not hear! sober letters. Addressing Mr. Gay at Tunbridge (he was, you know, a poet, penniless loving her. The Duchess of Queensberry Even the women concurred in praising and and in disgrace), she says: "The place you Handsome, yet witty, and a friend : "Not warped by passion, awed by rumor, Not grave through pride, or gay through folly; An equal mixture of good-humor are in, has strangely filled your head with bears testimony to her amiable qualities, and physicians and cures; but, take my word for writes to her: "I tell you so and so, because it, many a fine lady has gone there to drink you love children, and to have children love the waters without 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." you." The beautiful, jolly Mary Bellenden, represented by contemporaries as "the most perfect creature ever known," writes very Swiss," from the country, whither Mary had pleasantly to her "dear Howard," her "dear retired after her marriage, and when she gave up being a maid of honor. "How do you do, Mrs. Howard?" Mary breaks out, When Lord Peterborough was seventy years old, that indomitable youth addressed How do you do, Mrs. Howard? that is all some flaming love, or rather gallantry, letters have to say. This afternoon I am taken to Mrs. Howard- - curious relics they are of with a fit of writing; but as to matter, I have the romantic manner of wooing sometimes in nothing better to entertain you, than news use in these days. It is not passion; it is not of my farm. I therefore give you the follove; it is gallantry; a mixture of carnest lowing list of the stock of catables that I am and acting; high-flown compliments, profound fatting for my private tooth. It is well known bows, vows, sighs and ogles, in the manner of to the whole county of Kent, that I have four the Clelie romances, and Millamont and Dor-fat calves, two fat hogs, fit for killing, twelve icourt in the comedy. There was a vast promising black pigs, two young chickens, claboration of ceremonies and etiquette, of three fine geese, with thirteen eggs under raptures a regulated form for kneeling and each (several being duck-eggs, else the others wooing which has quite passed out of our do not come to maturity); all this, with rabdownright manners. Henrietta Howard acbits, and pigeons, and carp in plenty, beef cepted the noble old earl's philandering; an- and mutton at reasonable rates. Now, Howswered the queer love-letters with due acard, if you have a mind to stick a knife into knowledgment; made a profound courtesy to any thing I have named say so!" Peterborough's profound bow; and got John Gay to help her in the composition of her letters in reply to her old knight. He wrote her charming veses, in which there was truth as well as grace. "O wonderful creature!" he writes: : A jolly set must they have been, those maids of honor. Pope introduces us to a 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, contrary to the laws against harboring papists, and gave me a dinner, with something I liked better, an opportunity of conversation with Mrs. Howard. We all agreed that the life tunes were sung all over the land for hundreds of a maid of honor was of all things the most of years, and high and low rejoiced in that miserable, and wished that all women who simple music. Gentlemen who wished to enenvied it had a specimen of it. To cat West-tertain their female friends constantly, sent for phalia ham of a morning, ride over hedges a band. When Beau Fielding, a mighty fine and ditches on borrowed hacks, come home gentleman, was courting a lady whom he marin 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 wipe 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 mountain 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, who 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 we 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 they got through their business at all. They played all sorts of games, which, with the exception of cricket and tennis, have quite gone out of our manners now. In the old prints of Jt. 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 laid out, and Lord John and Lord Palmerston knocking balls up and down the avenue! Most of those jolly sports belong to the past, and the good old games of England are only to be found in old novels, in old ballads, or the columns of dingy old which say newspapers, 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 Totnes, and so on. ried, 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." 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 they brought back; but the greater number of people never left the country. The jolly squire often 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 Tunbridge; of the ladies having merry little private balls amongst themselves; and the gentlemen entertaining them by turns with tea and 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, who, if ever they prayed, would ask for some equipage or title, a husband or matadors: but this lady, who is but seventeen, and has £30,000 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 -mouldy old tenements, which we may still see in deserted inn-yards, in decayed provinA hundred and twenty years ago, there cial cities, out of which the great wen of were not only country towns in England, but London has sucked all the life. York, at aspeople who inhabited them. We were very size times, and throughout the winter, harmuch more gregarious; we were amused by bored a large society of northern gentry. very simple pleasures. Every town had its Shrewsbury was celebrated for its festivities. fair, every village its wake. The old poets At Newmarket, I read of "a vast deal of have sung a hundred jolly ditties about great good company, besides rogues and blacklegs;" cudgel-playings, famous grinning through at Norwich, of two assemblies, with a prodihorse-collars, great maypole meetings, and gious crowd in the hall, the rooms, and the morris-dances. The girls used to run races, gallery. In Cheshire (it is a maid of honor clad in very light attire; and the kind gentry of Queen Caroline who writes, and who is and good parsons thought no shame in looking longing to be back at Hampton court, and on. Dancing bears went about the country the fun there) I peep into a country house, with pipe and tabor. Certain well-known and see a very merry party: "We meet in |