tennis ball at his country seat of Cliefden. In the winter he had had an attack of pleurisy, from which he had now partially recovered; and in his impatience of precaution, behaved so recklessly that Sir Robert Walpole's remark to George II. during the latter's illness would have been equally suitable if addressed to the son; "Sir, do you know what your father died of? Of thinking he could not die." He attended at the House of Lords early in March, came home heated, and lay down three hours in a cold room with an open window in Carlton House. Removing at night to Leicester House, he awoke the next morning in danger of his life. He rallied for a time, saw his friends, and calling his eldest son, embraced him tenderly, and said " Come, George, let us be good friends while we are permitted to do so." Three physicians and two surgeons, Wilmot and Hawkins, attended him, and, strangely enough, pronounced him out of danger the day before his death. On the evening,"some members of his family were at cards in the adjacent room, and Desnoyers, the celebrated dancing-master, who, like St. Leon, was as good a violinist as he was a dancer, was playing the violin at the Prince's bedside, when the latter was seized with a violent fit of coughing. When this had ceased, Wilmot expressed a hope that his royal patient would be better, and would pass a quiet night. Hawkins detected symptoms which he thought of great gravity. The cough returned with increased violence, and Frederick, placing his hand upon his stomach, murmured feebly, Je sens la mort!' Desnoyers held him up, and feeling him shiver, exclaimed, The Prince is going!' At that moment the Princess of Wales was at the foot of the bed; she caught up a candle, rushed to the head of the bed, and, bend ing down over her husband's face, she saw that he was dead."* The newly-made widow, left so suddenly desolate, acted with touching and dignified grief in her bereavement. She had altered much since those days of her inexperienced girlhood, when her favourite occupation was to dandle her doll at the palace windows. So discreetly and judiciously had she behaved that Horace Walpole, writing shortly before her husband's death, observes, “I firmly believe, by all her quiet sense, she will turn out a Caroline." The same writer speaks again in another passage of her "quiet inoffensive good sense; "declares that she "had never said a foolish thing, or done a disobliging one since her arrival, though in very difficult situations, young, uninstructed, and besieged by the Queen, Princess Emily, and Lady Archibald's creatures, and very jarring interests;" and adds that she was always likely to have preserved an ascendancy over her husband. "She had," says Dr. Doran, "throughout her married life exhibited much mental superiority, with great kindness of disposition, and that under circumstances of great difficulty, and sometimes of a character to inflict vexation on the calmest nature.' For four hours after the Prince's death she refused to quit his side, disbelieving the assurances of the physicians that all was over, and hoping against hope that he might revive. She was then the mother of eight children, expecting shortly to be the mother of a ninth, and she was brought reluctantly to acknowledge that their father was no more. It was six in the morning before her attendants could persuade her to retire to bed; but she rose again at eight, and then, with less thought for her grief * Dr. Doran. than anxiety for the honour of him whose death was the cause of it, she proceeded to the Prince's room, and burned the whole of his private papers. By this the world lost some rare supplementary chapters to a Chronique Scandaleuse !"* The King was not very much agitated by the news. It was brought him at Kensington, as he stood by a card-table, watching the players, Princess Amelia, the Duchess of Dorset, the Duke of Grafton, and Madame Walmoden, now ennobled as Countess of Yarmouth. Turning to the messenger he remarked, "Dead, is he? Why, they told me he was better;" and then, crossing over to Lady Yarmouth, he said, calmly, "Countess, Fred is gone; " and dismissed the subject from his thoughts. He did however rouse himself to send a very kind message to his widowed daughter-in-law, which he repeated in writing the next morning, and sent by Lord Lincoln. The Princess "received him alone, sitting with her eyes fixed; thanked the King much, and said she would write as soon as she was able; in the meantime recommended her miserable self and children to him." His Majesty, however, troubled himself not at all about the ceremonial of the funeral, which was, consequently, mean and unhonoured in the extreme. The Prince's own household, and the lords who held the pall, two sons of dukes, two privy councillors, an Irish peer (Lord Lincoln), and a baron's son, attended; but not a single bishop or English lord-a fact due, not to intentional disrespect, but to the circumstance that no official notice of the funeral arrangements had been issued. The body was carried from the House of Lords to the Abbey without a canopy, no anthem was sung, and the organ was silent + Horace Walpole. * Dr. Doran. during the performance of the service. The spirit of partizanship was carried to extremes of utter meanness. "The gentlemen of the Prince's bedchamber were ordered to be in attendance near the body, from ten in the morning to the conclusion of the funeral. The government, however, would order them no refreshment, and the Board of Green Cloth would provide them with none, without such order. Even though princes die, il faut que tout le monde vive; and accordingly these poor gentlemen sent to a neighbouring tavern, and gave orders for a cold dinner to be furnished them. The authorities were too tardily ashamed of thus insulting faithful servants of rank and distinction, and commanded the necessary refreshments to be provided. They were accepted, but the tavern dinner was paid for and given to the poor."* The Jacobites expressed their views of the defunct Prince in their well-known epitaph on him, which, though often quoted, is here subjoined : Here lies Fred, Who was alive and is dead! I had much rather. Had it been his mother, Still better than another. Had it been his sister, No one would have missed her. But since 'tis only Fred, Who was alive and is dead, There is no more to be said. A London clergyman was not much more eulogistic concerning the dead heir-apparent. "He had no great parts, but he had great virtues— * Dr. Doran. indeed, they degenerated into vices. He was very generous; but I hear his generosity has ruined a great many people; and then, his condescension was such that he kept very bad company." Indeed the Prince's character was what could only be characterized as singularly unsatisfactory. He had many good points, and was a man of, to a certain extent, cultivated tastes; and was yet capable of the most unbridled profligacy and sensuality. Sincerity was to him almost an unknown virtue; and he did not appear to understand the meaning of consistency. He would write both French and English ballads in ecstatic praise of his cherè Sylvie, as he called the Princess; and would then hurry to the blandishments of other less legitimate objects of adoration. A specimen of one of these laudatory efforts will serve to show the style of his verses. The Princess, amongst much that was harassing and annoying, must have been pleased to receive the evidently sincere, though not very poetical, tribute:— THE CHARMS OF SYLVIA. "Tis not the liquid brightness of those eyes, Nor those heavenly arches which arise 'Tis not that hair which plays with every wind, 'Tis not that lovely range of teeth so white Nor e'en that gentle smile, the heart's delight, 'Tis not the living colour over each By Nature's finest pencil wrought, To shame the full-blown rose, and blooming peach, |