No-'tis that gentleness of mind, that love

So kindly answering my desire;

That grace with which you look, and speak, and move,
That thus has set my soul on fire.

"He loved," says Dr. Doran, "to have his children with him, always appeared most happy when in the bosom of his family, left them with regret, and met them again with smiles, kisses, and tears. He walked the streets unattended, to the great delight of the people; was the presiding Apollo at great festivals, conferred the prizes at rowings and racings, and talked familiarly with Thames fishermen on the mysteries of their craft. He would enter the cottages of the poor, listen with patience to their twice-told tales, and partake with relish of the humble fare presented to him. So did the old soldier find in him a ready listener to the story of his campaigns and the subject of his petitions; and never did the illustriously maimed appeal to him in vain. He was a man to be loved in spite of all his vices. He would have been adored had his virtues been more, or more real. But his virtue was too often-like his love for popular and Parliamentary liberty rather affected than real; and at all events, not to be relied upon." This love of freedom he was always anxious to impress upon the minds of his audience. A deputation of Quakers, who prayed him to give his support to a Bill in their favour, were answered, "As I am a friend to liberty in general, and to toleration in particular, I wish you may meet with all proper favour; but, for myself, I never gave my vote in Parliament; and to influence my friends, or direct my servants in theirs, does not become my station. To leave them entirely to their own consciences and understandings is a rule I have hitherto pre

scribed to myself, and purpose through life to observe." This announcement-which so charmed the honest Quakers that their spokesman, Andrew Pitt, made reply, "May it please the Prince of Wales, I am greatly affected with thy excellent notions of liberty, and am more pleased with the answer thou hast given us than if thou hadst granted our request "-was by no means a sincere one. The Prince did expect his entourage to take their opinions from him, and was very irate when they did not. "Does he think," said he of Lord Doneraile, who had ventured on having convictions of his own, "that I will support him unless he will do as I should have him? Does he not consider that whoever may be my ministers, I must be King?"

The best side of Frederick's character was his graceful and generous patronage of literary men. He was charmed with the stately sententiousness of the "Rambler," and never rested until he had sought and proffered his services to the writer. He visited Pope at Twickenham, gave to Tindal a gold medal with forty guineas, and sent to Glover, the author of "Leonidas," a five hundred pound note when he heard the poet was in distressed circumstances. He gave Thomson, of "Seasons"" celebrity, a pension of £100 a-year, and commanded him to write the "Masque of Alfred," which was acted before him at Cliefden in 1740, the poet acknowledging his kindness by dedicating his poem on "Liberty," and his tragedy of "Agamemnon," to him, and his play of “Edward and Eleanora " to his wife. He received authors at his Court, greeted them cordially, and often gave them precedence of those whose rank was greater than their brains. Indeed, he endeavoured to join their ranks, and made various

attempts at poetry. Most of his verses were in praise of his wife. "The matter," says Dr. Doran, 66 was good, but the manner was execrable. The

lady deserved all that was said, but her virtues merited a more gracefully skilled eulogist. The reasoning was perfect, but the rhymes halted abominably." On the whole, though neither so obstinate, so coarsely unfaithful, or So illtempered as his father, and though he had a winning presence, and was not devoid of attractive qualities, he was a man whose character it is impossible to esteem, and who would have little benefited his country, had he been called to reign over it; and most people will agree with the dry remark of Walpole, that he resembled the Black Prince in nothing but in dying before his father.

The young Prince George, now, by his father's death, Prince of Wales, is said by Walpole to have behaved "excessively well" at this juncture. He was a good, amiable boy, with no great keenness of imagination or feeling. When told of the death, he turned pale, and put his hand on his chest. "I am afraid, sir," said his tutor, Dr. Ayscough, rather foolishly, "you are not well." "I feel," said George, "something here, just as I did when I saw the two workmen fall from the scaffold at Kew." Frederick merited, perhaps, a somewhat warmer expression of regret from his eldest son; for in spite of his numerous faults, he had always been a kind and indulgent parent to his children.

Shortly after the funeral, George II. came to pay a visit of condolence to the widowed Princess. Though his son's death had not been any very severe affliction to him, he retained all his old sentimentality; and the sight of the young widow, surrounded by her children, and so soon expecting

the birth of another infant, was sufficiently touching and interesting to arouse his compassion and sympathy. A chair of state had been placed for him, but he refused it, took a seat on the couch beside the Princess, embraced her, and wept with her. The Lady Augusta would have kissed his hand, but he would not permit it; and giving it to her brothers, bade them "be good, brave boys, obedient to their mother, and deserve the fortune to which they were born."

"The King and Princess," says Walpole, "both took their parts at once; she, of flinging herself entirely into his hands, and studying nothing but his pleasure, but with winding what interest she got with him to the advantage of her own, and the Prince's friends; the King of acting the tender grandfather; which he, who had never acted the tender father, grew so pleased with representing, that he soon became it in earnest."

Four months after the death of Frederick, the Princess of Wales gave birth to a daughter, afterwards to be well known in history as the ill-fated Caroline Matilda. In the same year she was named by the King and Parliament as Regent of the kingdom, should the King die before the young Prince of Wales had attained his majority-an appointment which gave great offence to William, Duke of Cumberland, of Culloden memory, who looked upon the office as his special right. continued her residence in Leicester House, living in dignified seclusion among her children. Bubb Dodington gives a pleasant picture of an evening there in an entry in his "Diary," dated 17th November, 1753:

She

"The Princess sent for me to attend her between eight and nine o'clock. I went to Leicester House, expecting a small company and a little musick,.

but found nobody but her Royal Highness. She made me draw a stool and sit by the fireside. Soon after came in the Prince of Wales and Prince Edward, and then the Lady Augusta, all in an undress, and took their stools and sat round the fire with us. We continued talking of familiar occurrences till between ten and eleven, with the same ease and unreservedness and unconstraint as if one had dropped into a sister's house that had a family to pass the evening. It is much to be wished that the Princess conversed familiarly with more people of a certain knowledge of the world."

This life of retirement, chosen by Augusta and Lord Bute, who shared with her the guardianship of the heir-apparent, was one of the greatest mistakes into which she fell. "In her earnest desire," says Mrs Russell Grey, "to preserve him from the faults and follies of those around him, she did not act with perfect judgment; for she went so far as to keep him from all intercourse with the young nobility of his own age, and confined his knowledge of the world to books, and the small circle of Leicester House. Consequently he had no opportunity of forming his own opinions on different subjects, and became timid and reserved; so that the Princess at last herself said that she wished the Prince was a little more forward, and would enter more freely into conversation with people." Thrown back on their own resources, the two brothers, George and Edward, had curious conversations between themselves. One day, when their mother was sitting, melancholy and abstracted, in a room at Leicester House, with the two boys playing near her, "Brother," said the younger one, "when we are men, you shall marry, and I will keep a mistress."