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and all the foreign Ambassadors:' in fact, of doing what he described the Duke of Brunswick as having done.

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After expressly saying that the King was such an ass' that nobody did anything but laugh at what he said, and giving an exaggerated account of a scene with Lord Torrington, Greville adds: 'Torrington is a young man in a difficult position, or he ought to have resigned instantly and as publicly as the insult was given.' Lord Torrington did resign, and the matter was immediately set right: the King requesting that nothing more should be said about it. Would it not have been as well to inquire whether Lord Torrington had resigned before writing down or publishing that he had not?

In reference to the King's approaching death, Greville remarks: The public in general don't seem to care much, and only wonder what will happen.' This is in marked contrast to the impressions of a more trustworthy diarist:

'June, 1837.-The reign is not yet quite a week old, and yet how many strange occurrences and stranger feelings one wishes to recall, that all have passed before the eyes or in the mind in this short space. First, how strange it is that, in thinking of a departed Sovereign, one can from the bottom of the heart pray, "May my latter end be like his." Who that can look back some years-who would have thought that he would have died more loved, more lamented, than either of his predecessors on the throne? ...

'It is very interesting to compare the appearance of the town now, with that which it wore after the death of George IV.; then few, very few, thought it necessary to assume the mask of grief; now one feeling seems to actuate the nation; party is forgotten, and all mourn, if not so deeply, quite as unanimously, as they did for Princess Charlotte.'*

In the concluding paragraph of the third volume, qualified with faint praise, it is said that he (the King) always continued to be something of a blackguard and something more of a buffoon;" strong expressions to apply to the uncle of the reigning Sovereign, who stands in no need of an invidious contrast to place her grace and dignity of demeanour in broad relief.

The following memorandum was drawn up by the highly distinguished person to whom we have been already indebted, and we print it verbatim :

'When the King's end approached, Sir Herbert Taylor sent me to London to tell Lord Melbourne that His Majesty wished particularly to go to Brighton; it was thought the sea-air might be of service to him. I went to South Street in the

* 'Diaries of a Lady of Quality. Second edition, p. 296.

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morning and found Lord Melbourne at his toilet, in the middle of the operation of shaving. "Well," he said, "what have you to tell me?" and he continued to shave. I delivered my message. "Well," he said, "and when will the King go to Brighton?" "Never!" I answered. "Never!" said Lord Melbourne, laying down his razor, "what do you mean?" "I mean," I replied, "that the King is dying; he will never leave Windsor alive." Lord Melbourne looked thunderstruck. "Why," he said, "I have never heard a word of this ;" and the conversation then turned upon various matters, among which the King's charities were named. "How much does the King give away in charity?" asked Lord Melbourne. "Thirty thousand pounds a year," I replied. "It's impossible," said Lord Melbourne. I said, "But I have seen the Privy Purse accounts often enough to know that what I tell you is fact; and if you will examine those accounts for yourself, you will find what I say true."

'He seemed quite stupefied by the interview, and sat, halfshaved, musing-musing-musing. After waiting for several minutes, and finding that he asked me no more questions, I left him, still sitting before his glass, and apparently absorbed in a deep contemplation of his razor. He never moved or spoke as I left the room.'

'The first thing the King did, after his accession, was to pay his debts. He then made equal provision for his children. His eldest son, George FitzClarence, wished to be made a Peer and Governor-General of Australia. The King said repeatedly, "The days of Charles II. are gone by; I will never make an eldest son-you (his children) shall share and share alike." And he kept his word. George FitzClarence then applied to Lord Grey to be made a Peer. Lord Grey made known the fact to the King, who said that he would neither make nor meddle in the affair, and that, if Lord Grey thought proper to make his son a Peer, he might do so on his own responsibility; and Lord Grey did make George FitzClarence a Peer on his own responsibility. No sooner was he created Earl of Munster, than he applied to the King by letter to "doter" his Peerage. He used that French word. His letter was read and marked, in the usual course of business, "Dotation for Munster Peerage.' 'The King said what he gave him would have to be taken from his brothers and sisters, and as he had steadfastly determined not to imitate Charles II., he absolutely refused his son's application."

**

William IV. would allow no part of his Hanoverian revenue to be spent out of Hanover; and he left accumulations from it to the amount of £300,000 at the disposal of his successor, King Ernest, instead of dividing the money amongst his children.

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'From so much as I have read in extracts of the "Greville Memoirs," I consider that Mr. Greville knew nothing whatever of the mind of William IV. Of his truthfulness, kind-heartedness, attention to business, simplicity of life, tenderness to the Queen, love of his children, care of his servants, perpetual thoughtfulness and watchfulness for the public welfare, never failing, even when suffering torture from rheumatic gout in hands and feet, to attend levées, sign papers, and make (for a man of his age) considerable bodily exertion, when others would have sent for the doctor and gone to bed-of all these things I suspect Mr. Greville knew, and apparently cared, nothing.'

'The King, at times, was rough and curt in speech: he carried the quarter-deck into the drawing-room occasionally; but who ever heard a low maxim from this thorough Englishman? He gloried in his country, and, according to the faculties which God had granted him, he served it faithfully, passionately, honestly, loyally. He never forgot an old friend-witness those grey-headed old captains of the merchant-service who so often came to see him at Windsor, and who always called him "Your Royal Highness." The manners of the age had undergone a complete revolution between the date of his birth and that of his accession; and a man who can notice certain peculiarities of manner of the last century (or the commencement of this), and attribute them either to madness or innate ill-breeding, must be as ignorant as he is malevolent.'

'No scandal about Queen Elizabeth, I hope,' exclaims Mr. Sneer in the 'Critic.' Greville is not so scrupulous about Queens. After recording a joke of Lord Alvanley's, utterly unfit for publication (which Mr. Reeve italicises), he makes use of confidential communications to point and elucidate it for the benefit of the uninitiated :

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'January 3rd, 1833.-Lady Howe begged her Husband to show me the correspondence between him and Sir Herbert Taylor about the Chamberlainship . . . I told him my opinion of the whole business, and added my strenuous advice that he should immediately prevail on the Queen to appoint somebody else. . . . Lady Howe, who is vexed to death at the whole thing, was enchanted at my advice, and vehemently urged him to adopt it. After he went away she told me how glad she was at what I had said, and asked me if people did not say and believe everything of Howe's connexion with the Queen, which I told her they did.'

Then he told her what was notoriously not the fact; and he directly goes on to say that what passed was enough to satisfy him that there was nothing in it.' Then why perpetuate the scandal? Are we to suppose that he frequently revised these

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entries with great care, without its ever once occurring to him that to leave them for publication would be an offence against loyalty, delicacy, and propriety?

After applying sundry offensive epithets to Queen Adelaide's person, Greville does his best, on the strength of a ridiculous blunder, to depreciate her birth and family:

August 19th, 1834.-On Sunday I went all over the private apartments of Windsor Castle, and walked through what they call "the slopes" to the Queen's cottage; all very splendid and luxurious. In the gallery there is a model of a wretched-looking dog-hole of a building, with a ruined tower beside it. I asked what this was, and the housekeeper said, "The Château of Meiningen;" put there, I suppose, to enhance by comparison the pleasure of all the grandeur which surrounds the Queen, for it would hardly have been exhibited as a philosophical or moral memento of her humble origin and the low fortune from which she has been raised.'

'September 4th.-Errol told me she (the Queen Consort) showed them her old bedroom in the palace (as they call it) at Meiningen-a hole that an English housemaid would think it a hardship to sleep in.'

A gentleman who filled a high position in the Queen Consort's household, has supplied us with a note on this passage: 'The housekeeper, at the period referred to, was an intelligent woman, who knew as well as I did that the model in question was one of Altenstein, a ruined "Schloss," which the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen had the idea of converting into a summer residence. The model had been sent to Windsor for the purpose of enabling Sir Geoffrey Wyatville to prepare a plan for restoring the Schloss. The "Schloss" at Meiningen is a vast substantiallybuilt structure in the usual style of German "Residenzes." The reception rooms were large and handsome, and the private apartments exceedingly comfortable and well furnished.' Is it credible that no better bedroom than a hole could be found in such a residence for a princess?

*

The electoral, now royal, House of Saxony (of which the Houses of Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and SaxeWeimar are branches) is one of the most ancient and illustrious of the reigning Houses of Europe; and to talk of the humble origin of the daughter of an hereditary prince and sovereign is sheer ignorance or silly affectation.

Little less censurable is the use Greville makes of the details

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According to the Penny Encyclopædia,' the Schloss has a frontage of 500 feet with two wings, and contains a library of 28,000 volumes. It is now used for public offices; a new palace having been built for the residence of the ducal family.

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of a disreputable affair, which had been confidentially communicated to him by both parties:

August 8th.-There is a story current about the Duke of Cumberland and Lady Lyndhurst which is more true than most stories of this kind. The Duke called upon her, and grossly insulted her; on which, after a scramble, she rang the bell. He was obliged to desist and to go away, but before he did he said, "By God, madam, I will be the ruin of you and your husband, and will not rest till I have destroyed you both."

Ten days afterwards, August 18th:

'Yesterday, I met the Chancellor (Lord Lyndhurst) at the Castle at a Council. He took me aside and said that he wished to tell me what had passed, and to show me the correspondence.'

A note is taken of the principal letters, with or without leave, and these are now given to the world. Then (August 22nd) comes Sir Henry Cooke, on the part of the Duke of Cumberland, who wishes Greville to call on him and hear his statement of the facts; which was that Lady Lyndhurst had begged him to call upon her, then to dine with her, and upon every occasion had encouraged him :

'I heard all he had to say, but declined calling on the Duke... The Chancellor has since circulated the correspondence among his friends, but with rather too undignified a desire to submit his conduct to the judgment of a parcel of people who only laugh at them both, and are amused with the gossip and malice of the thing.'

It can be only to amuse fresh and similar parcels of people that 'the gossip and malice of the thing' are revived, with a completeness and authority which were wanting at the time and which in no other manner could have been conferred upon them. But, of course, scandal loses its noxious quality, or, at all events, ceases to affect 'private persons or affairs,' when a royal duke is the principal performer in the piece.

Of the Duke of York he says: 'I have been the minister and associate of his pleasures and amusement for some years; I have lived in his intimacy and experienced his kindness.' Yet the general impression he conveys of His Royal Highness is far from favourable :

'Although his talents are not rated high, and in public life he has never been honourably distinguished, the Duke of York is loved and respected. He is the only one of the Princes who has the feelings of an English gentleman; his amiable disposition and excellent temper have conciliated for him the esteem and regard of men of all parties, and he has endeared himself to his friends by the warmth and steadiness of his attachments, and from the implicit confidence they

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