loved, and of whom she was deprived this year. We allude to her father, the Duke of Brunswick. He had been but an indifferent husband and father, but his wife did not complain, and his daughter Caroline feared and adored him.

The father of the Princess of Wales at the age of seventy-one perished on the fatal field of Jena, on that day on which Prussia was made to pay the penalty of mingled treachery and imbecility. It had been her policy throughout the troubles of the time, to save herself at any other nation's cost. Such a policy caused her to fall into the ruin which overcame her at Jena, without securing the sympathy even of those nations which then fought against the then common enemy. In this battle the father of Caroline had done his utmost to win victory for Prussia, but in vain, and he lost his own life in the attempt. His ability and courage were all cast away. He had with him in the camp a very unseemly companion, in the person of a French actress, who was the friend of his aide-de-camp, Montjoy. This officer was close to him when in the midst of his staff, and at a distance altogether from where the battle was raging, the old duke was shot by a man on foot, "who presented his carabine so close, that the ball went in under the left eye (the duke was on horseback) and came out above the right, quite through the upper part of the nose." is Lord Malmesbury who suggests, without pretending to assert, that "Montjoy's brother, the Grand Veneur to Prince Max, the pretended King of Bavaria, and who was with Bonaparte, knew exactly where the Duke of Brunswick was to be found, and by a connivance with Montjoy produced the event."

It

After the death of the duke, the duchess became a fugitive, for the Duchy of Brunswick was in the possession of the French. And accordingly the poor Augusta, at whose birth in St. James's Palace there had been such scant ceremony and excess of commotion, came now in her old age, and after an absence of forty years, to ask a home at the hearth of the brother who loved her, as she used to say equivocally, as warmly as he could love anything; and of the sister-in-law who, as the poor duchess knew, regarded her with some dislike, and who was met with the

same amount and quality of affection on the part of Augusta of Brunswick.

She had, however, little cause to complain as far as these relatives were concerned. They received her cordially, and though they gave her no home in the palace in which she was born, they helped her to a humbler home, elsewhere, and occasionally lent it cheerfulness, by paying her a visit. In the meantime, the

widowed mother sat at the hearth of her deserted daughter, and though neither of them had sufficient depth of sentiment to bring her affliction touchingly home to the other, each was sufficiently stricken by severity of real sorrow to render her eloquent upon her own misery, if not attentive to the twice-told tale of her companion.

Meanwhile, there was pressure of another sort upon the princess a pressure of debt, incurred principally by the uncertainty with which she had hitherto been supplied with pecuniary means, and also the want of a controlling treasurer to give warning when expenditure was exceeding probable income. Prudent people find such an officer in themselves, but then the princess was not a prudent person, and among the things she least understood was the management, or the worth, of money. She was, however, in 1809, in so embarrassed a situation, as to render an application to the king's ministers necessary, when it was found that her debts exceeded 50,000l. A final arrangement was then come to. The prince and princess signed a deed of separation. The former consented to pay the debts to the amount of 49,000l. on condition of being held non-responsible for any future liabilities incurred by his consort. Her fixed income was settled at 22,000l. per annum, under the control of a treasurer, who was to discharge the remaining liabilities out of the present year's income, and to guard against any other occurring in years to come, if he could.

CHAPTER IV.

MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS.

By the exertions chiefly of Mr. Perceval, the princess had been declared innocent of the charges brought against her, had been received at court, and had apartments assigned her in Kensington Palace, which she occupied conjointly with her house at Blackheath. The clever friend of the princess was high in the popular esteem for these things, and the public awaited at his hands that banquet of scandal which he had promised them in the volume to be called "THE BOOK." When, however, they found the work suppressed by its author, and that he was soon after made Chancellor of the Exchequer, the public professed to discern here both cause and effect. They looked upon the elevation of Perceval as the reward of his literary self-denial. The honorable gentleman cared little for what the public thought, nor can it be said that either as friend of the princess, or servant of the prince, he served either of these illustrious persons, or even the public, unfaithfully.

In 1810, when imbecility settled definitively upon the mind of George the Third, Perceval proposed a restricted regency, but there was less cause for restriction now than there had been before, and the restriction was only maintained during one year. It was a period of great distress at home; and abroad, of such costly triumphs as made victory itself a glory not to be glad over. At this juncture, the regent acquired some degree of public esteem, and it was not ill-earned, by declining to receive an increase of revenue when the people were taxed to an extent such as no nation had ever before experienced. The public, however, would fain have seen the Princess of Wales raised also in a correspond

ing degree with the regent, by some distinctive mark to show that she was the regent's wife.

It was rather an unreasonable expectation, and Mr. Perceval was rather unreasonably censured for not realizing it. The deed of separation was, if not a cause, at least an apology, or authority, for keeping the princess in the condition of a private person. She could claim no higher title till the period that should make her husband a king. But this was no reason that she should be irritated by obstructions thrown in the way of her seeing her daughter. These obstructions were unworthy of their author, and failed in their object. They were excused on the ground that the manners of the mother were not edifying to the child, but when the two did meet, there was ample evidence of an affection existing between them, stronger than might have been expected at the hands of a daughter who had certainly not been educated in the holy faith that her mother was worthy of all the filial reverence that child could pay her.

In the meantime the regent had his difficulties. He who betrayed the Whigs, by whose advice he had been guided during the time of his father's sanity, but who had cast them off, after the death of Fox, in 1806, now sought to strengthen his government by the accession of some of his old friends. The Whigs, however, would not act with Perceval, and after the assassination of that minister in 1812, they lost, by their arrogance, the opportunity of forming an independent administration. The boast of Grey and Grenville that they would ride roughshod through Carlton Palace, led to the formation of the Liverpool Tory Ministry, which began its long tenure of office in June, 1812.

During these changes and negotiations, the Princess of Wales remained at Kensington or Blackheath, while her mother was very indifferently lodged in New Street, Spring Gardens, in halffurnished, dirty, and comfortless apartments. Amid filthy lamps on a sideboard, and common chairs ranged along dingy walls, sat the aged duchess, "a melancholy spectacle of decayed royalty." She is described as having good-nature impressed upon her features, frankness in her manners, with a roughly abrupt style of conversation, that rendered her remarkable. She loved to dwell

upon the past, though it was full of melancholy remembrances; and she is said to have been charitable to the frailties of the period of her own early days, but a strict censurer of those of the contemporaries of her old age.

Up to the period of the king's illness, the Princess of Wales did not want for friends to attend her dinners and evening parties. When the only advocate she had among the royal family virtually died, and the Prince of Wales became really king, under the title of regent, the number of her allies seriously diminished. They had to choose, as in the days of the first and second George, between two courts. They declared for that which was most likely to bring them most profit in galas and gaieties. Still the diminished court at Kensington was not so dull as that made up of a few venerable dowagers at the Duchess of Brunswick's. The princess called her mother's court a "Dullification," and yawned when she attended it, with more sincerity than good manners. But freedom from restraint was ever a delight to her, and she has been known on a birth-day, kept at Kensington, to receive her congratulating visitors, wrapped up in a pink dressing gown. It was at a birth-day reception that her brother, the Duke of Brunswick, who afterwards fell at Quatre Bras, presented her with a splendid compliment and a worthless ring. It was as much as duchyless duke could afford. On the other hand, on the same natal-day, December, 1810, Queen Charlotte showed a good-natured memory of the festival, by sending the princess a very handsome aigrette. The young Princess Charlotte was with her mother on that day, and she observed, rather flippantly, that the present was "really pretty well considering who sent it!"* The princess was at this time a fine girl, somewhat given to romping, but with the power of assuming a fine air of dignity when the occasion required.

At the pleasant dinners at Kensington, when the servants were out of the room, and a dumb waiter (all the better, as Sir Sidney Smith used to say, for being a deaf waiter also,) was at the elbow of every guest, the princess would seem to take delight in going

* Diary illustrative of the Times of George IV.