enabled to form soon after his accessionthe party of King's friends, who looked to the monarch seriously as a source of perpetual wisdom, and who placed their loyalty, not in protecting the rights and privileges of the crown, in supporting its dignity and power, but in rendering the personal will of the sovereign the rule of all things in and out of Parliament. We need not now say, that they lost us America, placed us in antagonism with France and with Ireland, drove from the councils and direction of the state, every man of ability and spirit, and at the most active period of European politics, placed the power and the finances of England in the hands of a man, far too young in judgment and experience, whatsoever his other talents, to be aware of the consequences of his own decision. It is notorious, that the younger Pitt embarked in the French War, with ideas of the present, and hopes of the future, as remote from reality and truth, as the Arabian Nights are from every-day facts. The personal influence of the King and King's friends begat all this. And these the elder Pitt would have prevented in 1761, had the Whigs been true to him. Is it to be wondered then, that when the Whigs came in, under no more efficient leaders than Conway and Rockingham, and then most completely at the mercy of the King's friends in the carrying of every measure,-is it to be wondered, that Lord Chatham would have nothing to say to them, seeing that they were allowing the King's friends to clinch, in 1776, the nail which they had driven in 1761 ? What an unhappy king was George the Third he began his reign amidst a series of unexampled victories. Every post brought a conquest! a province one day, a West Indian Island the next; Lord Clive sent him a continent! But young George turned in disgust from the enjoyment that most sovereigns prize. He scorned Victory when she came to him. And Victory, like a young goddess, offended at the slight, seldom came to the court of George the Third again, at least not as long as George the Third had a sound intellect. What would he have given in 1800, for even a sprig of those laurels, which he rejected in 1761, because culled by the hands of Chatham! There was breathing-time from the close of the American war to the commencement of the French. The moral thermometer, I have heard, was high in these years. People very soon recovered their disgraces in America, which were after all achieved upon us by our own race. They soon forgot the war, however; and the grand idea of the age was reform and improvement, in the representation, in political economy, in religion, in finance. There was not a statesman who had not found the philosopher's stone, and in it a panacea for the ills of political humanity. Fox was for converting the East into a ministerial apanage, and removing the home end of the syphon of wealth from Leadenhall to Whitehall. Pitt was refining Parliament by squashing all the boroughs, and filling the house of Commons with "fine old country gentlemen." Wilberforce was for reforming the luxurious and jovial habits of the rich, and tried to import Puritan independence from over the Atlantic; and clever Englishmen and Scotchmen of that day were embryo Louis Blancs, wild for a Socialist Republic. Stern reality exploded amongst their dreams. Each hoped, at the first outbreak of the French Revolution, to find his account in it. All were sooner or later disappointed. Nor was Pitt less disappointed, who hoped to see the realization of his father's great dream, viz., to throw France on its back, like a turtle. Unfortunately, it was England that was soon to resemble the turtle, more than France. The king lost his reason, the minister his life; around was an ocean of anarchy, which well nigh overwhelmed those who had helped to raise, and dared to embark on it. My senses first awoke to what was passing in the world, in the midst of that fearful war which had set the Continent in flames, its light and lurid interest being reflected from every countenance in these islands. Very schoolboys devoured the newspapers, and snatched the Courier. One might compare England during the first ten years of this century to a guard-house, a very splendid one, in which men delighted to wake and watch, in order to be ready to repel an enemy, still whiling away the night in all the enjoyment that excitement suggested, and that luxury could afford. There was a well of hope now rising in the midst of public despondency; for, however weak the credit of the nation, never were found means more ample-rents great, people loyal, wages ample, plenty to do, and plenty to spend-John Bull never inquired further. I heard of battles, victories, and defeats, and marked the grave impression that they made. No feat or fortune of war, however, made so great a sensation as George the Fourth's conduct on succeeding to power as Regent. For half a century the political struggle had not been so much between Whig and Tory, though both these rival banners were the most spoken of, as between King's friends and independent Tories. From the commencement of the century Pitt had ceased to be a King's friend. He was succeeded in the royal affection by Addington. The talent of the Tory party thus went all one way, and its loyalty the other. George the Fourth knew what talent was. None enjoyed it more in social converse; and he had an ample choice of it in Tory as well as Whig. He knew Wellesley as well as Moira, Canning as well as Sheridan. But the farther his royal head got into the crown, the narrower did it become, till the once generous prince was a mass of personality and pettiness. He was an Epicurean without the generosity of one; and, although he had not the same idea that his father had, of making his political will a law, which was to rescue the state by every one's rallying to it; he still resented any difference of opinion with him as a personal affront. He, therefore, lost to him the talent of all the parties that had governed England. He that was successful in wars abroad, and in Parliament at home what need was there of talent? George the Fourth, who had learned to disbelieve in human virtue, now doubted the advantage of even genius. Stupidity and suppleness were better. How discontented were the minds of young and clever Tories in subordinate places! There was no chance of rising. The official aristocracy of the Jenkinsons and Bathursts was as exclusive and imperious as any whig duke that ever bullied a Hanoverian king. And there were several singing birds in the Tory cage who were forbidden to let a single note be heard. Amongst these caged birds were Mr. Croker and Lord Palmerston, both ambitious, both eager to be all and every thing, and knowing themselves infinitely cleverer than the premier in all the dignity of pigtail. But Lord Liverpool hated Croker, and Palmerston trembled before him like a little boy. As Canning disliked Croker as much as Lord Liverpool did, there was small chance for the Admiralty Secretary, notwithstanding his connexion with Lord Hertford, and through Lord Hertford with the premier. The dislike of the Tadpoles and Tapers to Croker, was greatly owing to his being given to wield that mysterious and vulgar weapon the pen. And although he did use the said weapon with power and malignity, it was always in favor of the Tory cause and Tory party, and in vituperation of their enemies. Still the Jenkinsons and Bathursts were afraid of the penman. Canning's humor and his epigrams were dangerous enough, a double of them in the same administration was too much. The Duke of Wellington was more discerning and generous than any of his colleagues. Lord Palmerston was peculiarly attached to him, and the Duke liked both him and Croker. But the Duke, though supreme in the field, felt himself but a subaltern in the cabinet, did just what he was bid, without daring to have an opinion-witness his mission to Verona, and left the high matters of state, and state patronage, to men far less capable, far less liberal, and far less honest, to wield them. Had Peel at that time any tact, or any far views, he would have rallied to the side of the Duke of Wellington, inspired him with ideas, and pushed him forward. Instead of that, Peel pinned himself to the skirts of Old Eldon; and instead of his arousing the Duke out of his slumberous darkness of pure toryism, it was the Duke who shook him. It was, indeed, his making part of the Bullion Committee, that first destroyed Peel's veneration for pure toryism, and made him disbelieve in the allsapiency of Vansittart. But it was the military Duke, strange to say, that first taught Peel to look upon questions of religious legislation, for example, with the eye of a practical man and a soldier. Every man must recollect what the Duke said in the House of Lords in 1829. He said, that he had never opposed the Catholics for their believing in transubstantiation; his sole objection to them was their church government, to deal with which was a matter of political expediency. Here all the high church principles of Peel and Gladstone melted down in a very small crucible. These few sentences gave a complete idea of the Duke's political theology. Mr. Peel evidently took it as his own, as far more practicable than what he had been used to. But Peel was George the Fourth's aversion to Peel was singular. That he should dislike Canning and Brougham for sympathizing with his Queen-that he should hate the Whigs because he had wronged and been ungrateful to them, was natural. just the man for the now Tory monarch to have trusted to. But Peel was a political Puritan, awkward and in-kneed. The gentleman Prince considered the walk of Peel across a room as a feat which it was prodigious amusement to get him to repeat. So was he taken by superficials. This chapter has been rather a serious one, recording more what has been heard and heard repeated than seen. I may close this epoch with 1815, and cannot better terminate it than by relating an anecdote of that period, and of the momentous event which closed it and the war. When Napoleon made his sudden startling advance upon Belgium, surprising and beating the Prussians at Quatre Bras, and driving them in one direction, whilst the English retreated in another, there was of course alarm in all those who witnessed the military operations, and gave written accounts from them. Anxiety, not to say panic, was great in London, and nowhere greater than in ministerial circles. Two members of parliament-Fitzgerald was the name of one of them-had seen the advance of the French, and had come through the retreating masses of the British. They knew not what to make of it, and thought that their rank and importance entitled them to go to the Duke and ask him the meaning of all this. The Duke received the politicians with a moody brow, and did not deign to remove any of their anxieties. He inquired of them all they knew, and they told of regiments lost in high and waving corn, and artillery stuck in the unpaved sides of the high road. The Duke sighed gloomily, and advised our politicians to get out of the way as fast as ever heels or hoofs could carry them, for he could not tell what might happen, or what inundation sweep the country south of Brussels. The M.P.'s left Waterloo and its vicinity on the 17th, and came home in a state of mind, which they communicated to all from Westminster to Marylebone. 1 doubtedly be lost. And hereupon the Goldsmidtians sold stock to an unheard-of amount; and story would of course go on to say, they never recovered it. The instructions of Messrs. Rothschild to their agent were somewhat different. He was told to keep away from the field, from the army, and from its operations; to send no courier except with tidings of a fact already past question; and the fact deemed already past doubting in his mind, he was to come home himself, and give his reasons for crediting or being assured of it. The Rothschild agent was not only forbidden to station himself in the field, but he was also advised not to remain in Brussels either, which was soon to be the head-quarters of either exultation or panic, the one perhaps as little well founded as the other. He was told, on the contrary, to betake himself to Ghent, which was at a fair distance from the contending armies, and on the road to England. In Ghent, too, Louis the Eighteenth had stopped; and he, no doubt, would be sure to hear the first intelligence of import addressed to him. If it were good intelligence, his Majesty, or exMajesty, would soon divulge it; if bad, it would soon become apparent in the preparations of the King and his suite to move farther off, and embark once more for Old England. Guided by these instructions, Mr. Rothschild's agent, whose name I forget, but who was a solid old gentleman, very unlike the young go-ahead newsmonger of our day, stationed himself at Ghent, and kept his eye upon the hotel in which Louis the Eighteenth, was lodged, with the keenness of a man whose bread-and-butter is implicated in the success of his procuring intelligence. I do not know whether journals had "our correspondence" in those days. Notwith-' Now it so happened that Louis the Eightstanding the wonderful celerity of informa- eenth, who liked to play the king, had contion, which the Times succeeded in procur- sented to do so publicly, in order to gratify ing and in organizing, I doubt if it yet had the worthy inhabitants of Ghent. In order bulletins from the field of battle. But the to do this, he had consented to eat his breakgreat monied houses had their agent and fast in public on the following morning, just their rival agents, whilst the houses of Roths- as it was the custom at the Tuileries for the child and of Goldsmidt then fought and royal family to dine in public on certain struggled to procure intelligence, as Times days. Their majesties or their princedoms and Chronicle did some years later. The ate their meal, whilst the public marched story goes, that on this occasion the Gold-along a kind of corridor to behold them. smidts sent their agent to the field of battle. Perhaps one of the M.P.s was the agent; but probably this was not the case. At any rate the said agent was frightened out of the field by the Duke, and compelled to take refuge in Brussels, where finding panic prevail up to a very late hour on the 18th, he dispatched a courier to his principals with the intelligence that all was, or would un Well, our news-agent of course attended this breakfast, as the sight of the day. He walked in and up-stairs with the crowd of Ghentois, entered the room where Louis the Corpulent was eating with good appetite. There was scarcely a partition between his majesty's breakfast-table and the public; and our agent paused, with anxious and lingering respect, to observe the royal jaws in the very simple, but not sublime, operation of masticating food. Louis had just devoured his last chop, and our friend devoured the monarch in turn with his eyes, when a clatter was heard in the court below. A horseman had entered at full speed, and with equal speed, it would appear, the said horseman made his way up the staircase, determined to deliver his message into the royal hand. The messenger was neither more nor less than a courier, with short sword by his side, such as foreign couriers wear; and he handed to his majesty a large envelope, which when opened contained a paper with a very few words. The Duke of Wellington had won a great battle on the field of Waterloo. Bonaparte had fled, and his army was destroyed, routed, and dispersed. The old king handed the paper to be read aloud, and by none were its contents more greedily swallowed than by the agent of the Rothschilds. And then the old king, starting to his not very firm legs, still contrived to walk upon them over to the courier, who stood waiting for his guerdon, and bestowed upon the poor man a guerdon that he very little expected, viz., an embrace and a kiss upon both his cheeks. Our jolly Englishman, however elated before, was now ashamed, quite ashamed, that, not royalty, but manhood should inflict upon man such a thing as a kiss. He uttered an exclamation, went out, put on his hat, rushed to Ostend, put to sea in a fishing-boat, and got to the English coast and to London long before a packet, post, or ordinary messenger. His first care was to inform his patrons, the Messrs. Rothschilds, who paid him munificently, and entertained no doubt of his correctness. They then told him, that, after a certain hour of that day (for it was morning) struck by the London clocks, he might make what use he pleased of his intelligence. Accordingly my gentleman from Flanders paced up and down before the Horse Guards until the clock struck (I know not what hour, whether eleven or twelve). When it did strike, he walked into Downing street, and demanded to speak with Lord Liverpool. His passport, signed at Ghent on. such a day, soon got through all the shyness of official reserve, and he was now ushered into the presence of the Premier. He told his story, as I have told it, from the first matter of his instructions, to what he had heard at the royal breakfast. But he never mentioned the kiss-he would have blushed to do it. Never was man in such a pucker as was Lord Liverpool. He had been in the lowest spirits, oppressed by previous accounts, and he did not believe a word of his informant's story. It was a stock-jobbing business. The duke would have sent a messenger from the field to Downing street much sooner than to Ghent. Had the agent been a breathless soldier from the field, he might have believed him; but a mere clerk, with a tale gleaned sixty miles from the field, and no corroboration. Besides, the news was too good to be true. In his perplexity, however, Lord Liverpool sent round all the offices to all the people likely to know anything, or to be good judges in the matter. The deuce a one could be found, but Croker. He came and questioned the agent, nay, cross-questioned him in his sharp way. But there was no shaking his evidence. Well," says the Rothschildian to the officials, "you still doubt me, as if I would come here to lie for a paltry reward. If you won't believe what I tell you about the King of France and the courier who brought him the news, how will you believe what I am going to tell you, and what astonished me more than anything else; when Louis the Eighteenth read the letter, he started up, hugged the dusty, dirty courier, and kissed the fellow on both cheeks." "My lord," said Mr. Croker, "you may believe every word this gentleman says. For no English imagination could invent this circumstance of the kiss; and no possible circumstance could be a stronger guarantee of truth." Lord Liverpool therefore did believe, and was glad. But many still kept doubting. It was too good to be true; and why was the duke silent? Major Percy, with the dispatches, did not arrive till late in the evening; and when he did come, he could find nobody. His anxiety was to find the king. But no being could tell where his Majesty George the Fourth had dined, or where he spent the evening. At last the monarch was unearthed at Mrs. Boehm's, before whose door Percy stopped with his jaded coach and four; and the regent was enabled to inform the worshipful company around him, that the star of Napoleon Bonaparte had definitively set on the field of Waterloo. The last person to believe the great consumation of Waterloo was the Duchess of Augoulême. She had come to England while Louis had stayed at Ghent. And she had passed a life so steeped in misfortune, that she could and would not believe in the success of the English. Even the official dispatches did not convince her. "When you bring me a dispatch from Wellington, dated half-way to Paris, then I will believe you," said the despondent and incredulous princess. He whom she addressed went out, and soon returned with a dispatch dated Binch, showing the advance of the allied army after the victory. Then, and not till then, did the Duchess believe; then, and not till then, did she fling herself on her knees to return thanks to Heaven. Poor woman! she had so often been betrayed into vain exultation by fallacious hopes and unfounded stories, that she distrusted and questioned everything save disaster. The fate of poor Bird, the artist, in connection with these triumphs, is well known, and is worth repeating, as elucidatory of the character of George the Fourth. The Prince commissioned him to commemorate in a picture the circumstance of his conducting Louis the Eighteenth to the shore, on his re-embarking for France. Bird exerted all his powers to render the parting scene as effective and pathetic as might be. In order, however, to represent the enthusiasm of the crowd as great, he depicted some of the people, in their eagerness, climbing on the back of the Regent's carriage to get a sight of their Sovereign. This indecorum shocked the Prince. It was a gross outrage upon his dignity; and the way in which he received the picture was so ungenerous, and marked by resentment and contempt, that poor Bird was foolish enough to fall sick of it, and die. His unfinished picture of "Chevy Chace" will be long remembered. The peace of 1815 let England loose. Every one hoping for government favor or promotion, hurried abroad, and the old stagers of office began to consult their physicians about old ills, such as, if well furbished up, might require some foreign mud-bath or forgotten spa. There was as yet, however, no eminence abroad save that of kings and tetrarchs. Paris had been brought to the Russian doctrine, of considering nobody to be of the least import, if he were not of official eminence; and that constitutes the most formal and dull kind of society or of aristocracy. It was my great good fortune to know one, whom Prince Talleyrand loved, and indeed whom every one loved for his simplicity, honesty, and intelligence. Although not exceedingly au fait as to some of the political events and personal intrigues in progress, some anecdotes and circumstances made a great impression on me, as they aroused and created interest in those around. Few accounts struck me more than that given of the meeting between Talleyrand and Fouché for the purpose of making these implacable enemies act in concert for the cause of the Restoration. Both these men had traversed the whole course of the Revolution, had seen its first stir, and joined in its full excitement. Fouché had been a Jacobin and a Terrorist; and if he was degraded by having been the comrade of Danton and Robespierre, Talleyrand was scarcely less so for having been the instrument of the Directors Rewbell and Barras. They had intrigued and counter-intrigued against each other during Napoleon's reign; and now one represented the party of the old régime, the other held in his hand the threads of the Imperialists and revolutionary parties. Both were indispensible to the security of Louis the Eighteenth, and though the monarch's entourage turned pale at the sight of Fouché, the latter had done such good service in tracking and besetting Bonaparte, that to discard him was impossible. Fouché, too, could terrify the King into mildness, or give arguments for it against the violence of his brother and the ultras. So Fouché and Talleyrand embraced, and were put into the same coupé to agree upon the terms and mode of co-operation. The countenances of neither betrayed the least emotion. And the most curious part of the scene was the complete immobility of these two pale masks, each covering more hate and more artifice than any two men in Europe perhaps could combine. Talleyrand used to say, that the most unhappy and despondent men were monarchs, and never more so than in the hour of triumph. Whether it was, that this raised them so high as to make them behold the nothingness of honor, greatness, and even that of royal or imperial prospects. Never was a gloomier cortege than that formed by the crowned and laurelled heads of the conquerers of 1814 and 1815. The Emperor Alexander was desolé par le victoire. He lamented Napoleon's fall as much as Elizabeth did Essex's, and wondered the fallen chief had not sent him his ring. When Louis the Eighteenth declared he owed his restoration, after God, to England and the Prince Regent, the Emperor was scandalized, and could not foresee how completely ascendant Russian power was likely to become under the elder Bourbons. If Alexander's was a sentimental gloom, the King of Prussia's seemed a constitutional and |