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lutions of thought, government, society,-to survive out of the old world into ours.

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3. His mother's bigotry and hatred George inherited with the courageous 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 Church, of which he was the titular defender. Like other dull men, the king was all his life suspicious of superior people. He did not like Fox; he did not like Reynolds; he did not like 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 little, probably, to expand that small intellect, though they might have improved his tastes, and taught his perceptions some generosity. . .

4. George married the Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg Strelitz, and for years they led the happiest, simplest lives, 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 simplest pleasures-the very mildest and simplest-little country dances, to which a dozen couple were invited, and where the honest king would 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. O, Arcadia! what a life it must have been! ...

5. The theatre 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 Shakspeare, or tragedy much; farces and pantomines were his joy; and especially when the clown swallowed a carrot or a string of sausages, 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.

6. "George, be a king!" were the words which his mother was forever croaking in the ears of her son; and a king the simple, stubborn, affectionate, bigotted man tried to be. He did his best-he walked according to his lights: what virtue he knew, he tried to practice; what knowledge he could master he strove to acquire. . . . . . But, as one thinks of an office almost divine, performed by any mortal man, of any single being pretending to control the thoughts, to direct the faith, to order the implicit obedience of brother millions; 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 shall be your allies, whom you shall help,-these others your enemies, whom you 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?

7. 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, that made the war with America; it was he and the people who refused justice to the Roman 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, which one almost admires as one thinks his character over.

8. His courage was never to be beat. It trampled North under foot; it beat 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 the plan which had engaged him up to the moment of his malady. I believe it is by persons believing themselves in the right, that ninetenths of the tyranny of this world has been perpetrated.

9. 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, who 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. . . .

10. Of little comfort were the king's sons to the king; but the pretty Amelia was his darling, and the little maiden, prattling and smiling in the fond arms of that old father, is a sweet image to look on. . . . . . 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,

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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."

11. The poor soul quitted it, and, ere yet she was dead, the agonized 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. All 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 parliaments, reviewing fancied troops, holding ghostly courts. I have seen his picture, as it was taken at this time, hanging in the apartments of his daughter, the Landgravine of Hesse Hombourg, amidst books and Windsor furniture, and a hundred fond reminiscences of her English home.

12. The poor old father is represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard falling over his breast-the star of his famous Order still shining on it. He was not only sightless-he became utterly deaf. All light, all reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasures of this world of God, were taken away from him. Some slight lucid moments he had; in one of which the queen, desiring to see him, entered the room, and found him singing a hymn and accompanying 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.

13. What preacher need moralize 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 life, death, happiness, victory. "O brothers!" I said to those who heard me first in America-"O brothers! speaking the same dear mother tongue-O comrades! enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together as we stand by the 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, buffetted 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!'

'Vex not his ghost-oh, let him pass-he hates him

That would upon the rack of this tough world

Stretch him out longer!'

Hush! Strife and Quarrel, over the solemn grave! Sound, Trumpets, a mournful march. Fall, Dark Curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy!"

State of Society in England under the first three Brunswick Kings.

[From Anderson's "School History of England."]

1. DURING this period, extending from 1714 to 1820, and therefore nearly coincident with the eighteenth century, the British government assumed a more settled character; and, as the people advanced in intelligence, became more and more dependent upon their wishes. Hence the king ruled through his ministers, who were able to continue in office only as long as they succeeded in retaining the support of parliament. The power exercised by the sovereign has ever since been very limited, solely depending upon his intelligence, force of character, and moral worth; and all the agencies of government have become more and more under the control of public opinion, the great ruling power of every truly civilized nation. The popular agitations, riots, etc., to secure parliamentary reform, and a more general and equitable representation in the House of Commons, indicate the efforts which this power was exerting, toward the close of this period, to assert its supremacy.

2. This ardent desire for freedom, which so strikingly characterized the public mind in England, was, in the first place, the result of the American war for independence, with its successful issue. The great questions which sprung up during this

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