SENTIMENTS OF PROFOUND RESPECT,

AND

A SACRED REVERENCE

FOR

SORROW OCCASIONED BY AN IRREPARABLE LOSS,

IN WHICH

ALL HEARTS MUST PARTICIPATE,

THIS HUMBLE ATTEMPT TO SKETCH

A CHARACTER,

THAT,

BY THE SPECIAL BLESSING OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE

UPON THESE REALMS,

HAS SHONE, with à luSTRE UNPARALLELED,

FOR NEAR SIXTY YEARS,

AN UNIFORM EXAMPLE

OF ALL THE VIRTUES THAT COULD ADORN

THE WIFE, THE MOTHER, AND THE

QUEEN,

IS MOST HUMBLY AND DUTIFULLY INSCRIBED

TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS

THE

PRINCE REGENT.

M300939

PREFAC E.

Ir was a custom with the antient Egyptians,

when persons of eminence departed this life, to institute a minute investigation of their conduct in the midst of a general assembly of the people, and according as the balance was found to preponderate on the side of virtue, so was the degree of respect awarded by the public voice to their remains.

After making all due allowance for ordinary errors, and unavoidable infirmities, if the character appeared worthy of general imitation, no honours were thought too great, or ceremonies too expensive, to endear the memory of the deceased, and to perpetuate the record of his actions.

What was thus practised by a nation proverbially celebrated for wisdom, is now become the province of the Historian; and though he has it not in

his

power to restrict the parade of funereal grandeur, which wealth may purchase, and ambition command, it is his chronicle only that posterity will consult for the deeds of those who in their day were distinguished above the rest of mankind.

Here, as in the grave, the mighty are on a level with the mean; and, however elegant may be the language of interested flatterers, their eulogiums

must soon sink into contempt when devoid of the principle of truth. Nothing can kindle the emotion of gratitude, the sentiment of admiration, and the feeling of emulation, in contemplating the sepulchres of the great, but the faithful memorial of those virtues which will alone remain fragrant amidst the murkiness of the tomb.

Still it is necessary, for the great end of moral instruction, that the lights who have illumined our hemisphere should be registered with scrupulous exactness in the pages of history, to recall men's minds to a consideration of the bright examples which Providence so long continued above the horizon, as guides in the path of immortality.

They who are elevated above the mass of society are objects of general observation during life; and when they depart hence, inquiries naturally arise respecting their public actions and private deportment.

Happy is it, therefore, when the biographer, who undertakes the task of gratifying this spirit of curio sity, as far as his means of intelligence allow, is released from the necessity of becoming an APOLOGIST, and finds himself under no other obligation than that of discharging the simple duty of a NARRAtor.

Such is the situation in which the author of the ensuing Memoir stands, both as it regards the exist ing generation and posterity; the living, who seek for information, and the illustrious shade who is now beyond the praise or censure of mortals, in that

sphere "where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are in everlasting rest."

In tracing the course of this exalted personage, who shone, with no borrowed light, through the darkness, storms, and tempests of an evil age, the reader, as he proceeds from year to year, sees the same fixedness of moral and religious principle amidst the shocks of revolutions, the violence of factions, and the increased licentiousness of the times.

The biography of sovereigns placed in such circumstances, and whose lives have been protracted to an unusual period, is expected to abound in remarkable incidents, in the relation of private cabals, the detail of political connexions, and all that variety of matter, emphatically comprised in the term of secret history. Here, on the contrary, the story, though long in itself, from the extent of the period, and interesting on account of its objects, exhibits an even tenour of active virtue uncontaminated by the turbid corruptions of party, and totally free from the imputation of insincerity.

They who look for particulars of regal pageantry will be little gratified in the perusal of this narrative; and still less will those readers be pleased whose vitiated taste is only to be allured by the whisperings of scandal, details of conversations that never occurred, and anecdotes of circumstances that originate only in the fertility of imagination.