my first wife; and which, as she gave it to me, so I leave it to you. I hope you will marry, and have children to inherit it." Lady Betty, though left young a widow, and though she survived Sir John fifty years, never married a second time." KINGLY AFFECTION. George II. and his son Frederick, Prince of Wales, several years previous to the decease of the latter, lived on terms of complete alienation, or rather hostility. The King, though he never visited his son during his last illness, sent constantly to make inquiries; and received accounts, every two hours, of his state and condition. He was so far from desiring the Prince's recovery, that, on the contrary, he considered it would be an object of the utmost regret. Nor did he conceal his sentiments on this point. He was one day engaged in conversation with the Countess of Yarmouth, when the page entered, announcing that the Prince was better: "There now," said his Majesty, "I told you that he would not die." On the evening of the Prince's decease, the King had his usual party at Lady Yarmouth's apartments, and had just sat down to cards, when a page brought, from Leicester House, the information that the Prince was no more. The King did not testify either emotion or surprise. Then, rising, he crossed the room to Lady Yarmouth's table, who was likewise playing at cards, and leaning over her chair, said to her in a low tone of voice, in German, "Freddy is dead." Having communicated it to her, the King instantly withdrew. She followed him, the company broke up, and the news became public. These particulars were communicated by one of the party to Sir N. Wraxall. UNLUCKY GARDENING. The gardens of Lord Islay (afterwards Duke of Argyll) at Whitton, or rather upon Hounslow Heath, were very cultivated, and gave rise to the following epigram : "Old Islay, to show his fine delicate taste In improving his gardens purloin'd from the waste, But alas! what a sight did the next cut exhibit ! He order'd it quick to be clos'd up again With a clump of Scotch firs, that served for a screen.” A DELICATE HINT. When Mrs. Chevenix, the toy-woman of Bath, and her sister Bertrand, called upon Walpole, touching the property of Strawberry Hill, he showed them his cabinet of enamels instead of treating them with white wine. The Bertrand said, "Sir, I hope you don't trust all sorts of ladies with this cabinet." What an entertaining assumption of dignity! GEORGE II. AT DETTINGEN. Frederick the Great, in his Histoire de mon Temps, gives the following account of George II. at Dettingen: "The King was on horseback, and rode forward to reconnoitre the enemy his horse, frightened at the cannonading, ran away with his Majesty, and nearly carried him into the midst of the French lines: fortunately, one of his attendants succeeded in stopping him. General Cyrus Trapaud, then an ensign, by seizing the horse's bridle, enabled his Majesty to dismount in safety. Now that I am once on my legs,' said he, ‘I am sure I shall not run away.' The King then abandoned his horse, and fought on foot at the head of his Hanoverian battalions. With his sword drawn, and his body placed in the attitude of a fencing-master, who is about to make a lunge in carte, he continued to expose himself, without flinching, to the enemy's fire." LADY SARAH LENNOX. Lady Sarah, the youngest daughter of the second Duke of Richmond, was born in 1745; and it is said, that when sixteen, she refused an offer of marriage made her by George III., but that she ultimately accepted him. Kensington traditions describe Lady Sarah as making hay in the fields, then bordering the road, and exchanging a word or two with the young Prince as he rode by. But the royal lover deceived her, and she, instead of being bride at his wedding, was only a bridesmaid. Lady Sarah was speedily consoled; for the year after the union of George and Charlotte, she married, at the age of eighteen, the well-known baronet, Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury. Subsequently, a widow of the mature age of thirty-six, Lady Sarah married, in 1781, the Hon. George Napier, son of Francis, fifth Lord Napier. The first child of which she was the mother was the "Sir Charles 66 Napier," the hero of Scinde, whose " very existence" is ludicrously described by his biographer and brother, Sir William, as an offence to royal pride." The slowness of Sir Charles Napier's promotion is amusingly laid to this union. When Lady Sarah was seventy, this eldest son of a brave, honourable, but singularly arrogant family, wrote to Lady Sarah: "It is the greatest satisfaction to me that the Regent is fifty, and that I am only thirty-four;" and at an earlier period by fifteen years, he expresses his disgust against the Prince of Wales, "for taking the liberty of calling me Charles! Marry, come up, very dirty cousin.' Lady Sarah Lennox died in 1826, being then in her eighty-first year.Dr. Doran: note to Walpole's Last Journals. REMARKABLE COINING STORY. In the spring of 1746, an elderly woman gave information against her maid for coining, and the trial came on at the Old Bailey. The mistress deposed that having been left a widow several years ago, with four children, and no possibility of maintaining them, she had taken to coining that she used to buy old pewter-pots, out of each of which she made as many shillings, &c., as she could pass for three pounds, and that by this practice she had bred up her children, bound them out apprentices, and set herself up in a little shop, by which she had got a comfortable livelihood; that she had now given over coining, and indicted her maid as accomplice. The maid in her defence said, “That when her mistress hired her, she told her that she did something up in a garret into which she must never inquire: that all she knew of the matter was, that her mistress had often given her moulds to clean, which she did, as it was her duty that, indeed, she had sometimes seen pieces of pewterpots cut, and did suspect her mistress of coining; but that she never had had, or put off, one single piece of bad money." The judge asked the mistress if this was true; she answered, "Yes;" and that she believed her maid was as honest a creature as ever lived; but that, knowing herself in her power, she never could be at peace; that she knew, by informing, she should secure herself; and not doubting but the maid's real innocence would appear, she concluded the poor girl would come to no harm. The judge flew into the greatest rage; told her he wished he could stretch the law to hang her, and feared he could not bring off the maid for having concealed the crime; but, however, the jury did bring her in not guilty. Horace Walpole, who relates this story, adds: "I think I never heard a more particular instance of parts and villainy." TOO GOOD FOR ANYTHING. Walpole, in his Letters, 1749, presents us with an impersonation of this rare excellence in le beau Gibberne, whose position he thus cleverly describes, in a letter to Sir Horace Mann: "Gibberne has been with me again to-day, as his mother was a fortnight ago: she talked me to death, and three times, after telling me her whole history, she said, 'Well, then, sir, upon the whole,' and began it all again. Upon the whole, I think she has a mind to keep her son in England; and he has a mind to be kept, though in my opinion he is very unfit for living in England-he is too polished! For trade, she says, he is in a cold sweat if she mentions it; and so they propose, by the acquaintance, he says, his mother has among the quality, to get him that nothing called something. He seems a good creature; too good to make his way here." FLORENTINE BLUNDERS. The Chevalier Lorenzi, whom Walpole feasted with venison which he protested was 66 as good as beef," with all his thirst for English knowledge, vented as many absurdities as if he had a passion for Ireland too. He was transported with some Florentine works of art, of which he said, the Great Duke had the originals, and there never had been made any copies of them. He told a lady also that he had seen a sapphire of the size of her diamond ring, and worth more she said that could not be. "Oh!" said he, "I mean, supposing your diamond were a sapphire." A LOVER OF POMP. The Duchess of Buckingham, natural daughter of James II., in her journey to the Continent, always stopped at Paris, visited the church where lay the unburied body of James, and wept over it. A poor Benedictine of the convent, observing her filial piety, took notice to her Grace that the velvet pall that covered the coffin was become threadbareand so it remained. Though the Duchess could not effect a coronation to her will, she indulged her pompous mind with such puppet-shows as were appropriate to her rank. She made a funeral for her husband as splendid as that of the great Marlborough; she renewed that pageant for her only son, a weak lad, who died under age; and for herself: and prepared and directed waxen dolls of him and of herself to be exhibited in glass-cases in Westminster Abbey. It was for the procession at her son's burial that she wrote to old Sarah of Marlborough to borrow the triumphal car that had transported the corpse of the . Duke. "It carried my Lord Marlborough," replied the other, "and shall never be used for anybody else." "I have consulted the undertaker," replied the Buckingham, “and he tells me I may have a finer for twenty pounds." One of her last acts was marrying her grandson to a daughter of Lord Hervey. The day which was appointed for his first interview with the Duchess was on the martyrdom of her grandfather: she received him in the great drawing-room of Buckingham House, seated in a chair of state, in deep mourning, attended by her women in like weeds, in memory of the royal martyr! GOOD ADVICE. Mrs. Leneve used often to advise Walpole never to begin being civil to people he did not care for: "for," said she, you grow weary of them, and can't help showing it, and so make it ten times worse than if you had never attempted to please them." COURT CHAPLAINS. Odd stories are told of devotional exercises at Court. While Caroline, Queen of George II., dressed, prayers used to be read in the outward room, where hung a nude Venus. |