AMELIA, youngest daughter of George the Third, was born on the 7th of August, 1783. In childhood and youth, although delicate, she possessed great vivacity: her talents were good, and her temper excellent. Unfortunately, she was afflicted with a glandular disease, which, even in its incipient state, occasioned her considerable suffering; and shortly after she had entered her twenty-fourth year, it assumed a hopeless form; but she

lingered, in great agony, which she bore with the most admirable resignation, until the latter end of 1810. Her death took place on the 2nd of November in that year.

George the Third appears to have been particularly fond of her royal highness; and it is even asserted, that his last mental aberration was materially accelerated by the deep grief with which he contemplated the prospect of her approaching decease.

THE only child of George the Fourth by his consort, Caroline of Brunswick, was born on the 7th of January, 1796, and baptized Charlotte Caroline Augusta, on the 11th of the following month. Bishop Porteus describes her, in 1801, as having been "a most captivating and engaging child. She repeated," continues he, "several of her hymns with great correctness and propriety; and being told, when she went to Southend, in Essex, she would then be in my diocese, she fell down on her knees, and begged my blessing."

Her education was conducted, first under the superintendence of the Countess of Elgin, and subsequently under that of the Baroness de Clifford. She was removed from the immediate guardianship of her mother, about the period when the delicate investigation of the charges made by Sir John and Lady Douglas against the Princess of Wales took place, and was placed at Warwick house, by command of George the Third, who had claimed the privilege of bringing her up under his own protection, as she was a child of the state. Queen Charlotte, whom the young princess appears to have hated, exercised, it is said, a secret interference as to her studies, and employed Hannah More to write an elementary work for her use.

In 1809, Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury, became her preceptor, and Doctors Nott and Short his assistants. At an early period of her life, she had displayed much waywardness and caprice; and although she at length became sufficiently tractable and diligent to pass through her studies in a manner decidedly brilliant, yet, her naturally high and irritable spirit was still unsubdued. When in her thirteenth year, the bishop, her tutor, having deemed it expedient mildly to rebuke her for some inattention, she snatched off his wig, dashed it on the floor, and indignantly quitted the room. At another time, Queen Charlotte, who had previously sent her a handsome shawl, having reminded her that she had not yet acknowledged the gift, the princess took the present alluded to from her shoulders, and thrust it into the fire. As, however, she advanced towards womanhood, her pride and violence of temper subsided, and she became, on the whole, of a decidedly amiable, but still lofty and uncompromising character.

To her mother, who was rarely permitted to see her, she displayed great affection; and the coolness with which the Princess of Wales was treated by most of the royal family, appears to have occasioned her considerable pain. In 1814, her attempts to indulge in a

closer correspondence with her mother than had previously been permitted, excited the anger of the prince regent, who intimated, in rather harsh terms, his intention of removing her, without delay, to his own residence. The young princess, however, contrived to quit Warwick house unperceived, stepped into a hackney coach, and drove off to her mother's house at Blackheath. After some negotiation, and on receiving an assurance that she should not be immured, nor treated with severity, she was eventually prevailed upon to trust herself to the regent's protection.

The Princess of Wales soon afterwards went to Italy, and all restraint upon her royal daughter was then removed. In the following summer, during an excursion to the coast, the young princess accepted an invitation to go on board the Leviathan man-of-war; on reaching which, she said to the lieutenant who escorted her party, "I resign the accommodation-chair, provided to hoist us on deck, to the bishop and the ladies: do you, sir, take care of my clothes, and I will go up the ladder."

The young Prince of Orange was long considered her accepted lover; but in 1814, Prince Leopold of Saxe Cobourg began to be honoured with her especial notice; and, on the 2nd of May, 1816, she was united to him at Carlton house. Parliament, on this occasion, voted £60,000 as an outfit to the royal couple; £10,000 per annum as pin money for the bride; and £50,000 a year during their joint and several lives. Previously to her marriage, one of the ministers waited on her, for the purpose of settling some details, relative to her income; but not deeming his propositions sufficiently liberal, she addressed him in the following terms: "My lord, I am heiress to the throne of Great Britain, and my mind has risen to a level with the exalted station

I am to fill therefore, I must be provided for accordingly. Do not imagine that, in marrying Prince Leopold, I ever can, or will, sink to the rank of Mistress Cobourg.-Entertain no such idea, I beg of you."

The princess and her husband, soon after their marriage, retired to Claremont, where they enjoyed much domestic happiness, until the fatal accouchement of her royal highness, in November, 1817. On the 5th of that month, she gave birth to a still-born male child. On the following morning, although she had been supposed, "to be doing extremely well," she was attacked, first with faintness, and soon afterwards with convulsions. Her medical attendants, on being summoned, found her at the point of death. received the announcement of her approaching dissolution with extraordinary calmness, and continued to express her affection to Prince Leopold by the most eloquent signs, even up to the moment when she expired. The grief exhibited by the people for her loss, was entirely without a parallel: her death being almost as deeply and generally lamented, as though she had been a member of every family in the kingdom.

She

In person, she was of the middle stature, stout, but of elegant proportions: her eyes were blue, large, and intelligent; her complexion was unusually fair; the expression of her features dignified; and her whole appearance prepossessing. Her spirit was high, her temper irritable, and her inclination somewhat despotic; but, on the other hand, her affections were warm, her mind was cultivated, and her benevolence boundless. She had been brought up in sound moral, religious, and constitutional principles; and, had she lived to ascend the throne, it seems probable that, with many of the frailties, she would have displayed all the better qualities of an Elizabeth.

THE parents of this unfortunate prince were James the Second, and Maria D'Este, sister to Francis, Duke of Modena, who were united in 1673. The bride was then only in her fifteenth year, by no means beautiful, and so poor, that the king of France paid her marriage portion. She possessed, however, in the opinion of her consort, an inestimable charm, in being strongly attached to the Roman catholic faith. For the first fourteen years of her marriage she had no children; but at length it was announced, in the London Gazette, that her majesty had become pregnant; and, on the 10th of June, 1688, she was delivered of a son. The birth of a Prince of Wales excited an extraordinary ferment in the nation the catholics gloried in the event; but the majority of the protestants broadly insinuated, that the pretended heir-apparent was not the queen's child. One party asserted that she had never been pregnant; a second insisted that she had miscarried; and a third allowed that she had borne a son, but contended that the royal infant had died soon after its birth. These imputations of fraud appear, however, to have been utterly destitute of foundation.

On the 15th of October, the young prince was christened James Frederick Edward. On account of the gloomy aspect of affairs in this country, the queen withdrew with him to France early in the following month; and before the year closed, his father had ceased to be a reigning king.

The exiled monarch died at St. Germaine, on the 16th of September, 1701. Just before his dissolution took place, he conjured the young prince, in the

most earnest manner, 66 never to barter his salvation for a crown, or to let any worldly views wean him from his attachment to the holy catholic faith." In pursuance of a pledge which Louis the Fourteenth had given the expiring monarch, James Frederick was, immediately after his father's demise, acknowledged (but without ceremony) as King of England by the French court. The pope, the King of Spain, and the Duke of Savoy, did him the same empty honour; but no steps were taken to procure his restoration. In England, acts of attainder were passed against him, and also against his mother; who, however, succeeded in obtaining £50,000, as a composition for the unpaid balance of her dowry, by means of a suit in chancery.

The acts of attainder were followed by the introduction of a bill abjuring the Pretender, and declaring William the Third to be rightful king of these realms; against the passing of which, however, several members, in both houses, solemnly and vehemently protested. During the reign of Queen Anne, the Jacobite party in this country increased, as well in political influence as numbers. The queen herself, who was a daughter of James the Second by his first wife, although she had ascended the throne to the exclusion of James Frederick, still regarded him as a brother. On one occasion, when a proposal was made in her presence, at the council board, to set a price upon his head, she burst into tears, and abruptly left the room. So strong was her aversion to the Elector of Hanover, that she did all in her power to prevent any of his family visiting England; and no doubt exists, but that, had she