was animated herself. She appeared in the court of justice, and with some wit and infinite abuse, treated the laughing public with the spectacle of a woman who had held the reins of empire, metamorphosed into the widow Blackacre. Her grandson, in his suit, demanded a sword set with diamonds, given to his grandsire by the Emperor. "I retained it," said the beldam, "lest he should pick out the diamonds and pawn them." Her insolent asperity once produced an admirable reply from the famous Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Lady Sundon had received a pair of diamond earrings as a bribe for procuring a considerable post in Queen Caroline's family for a certain peer; and decked with those jewels, paid a visit to the old Duchess; who, as soon as she was gone, said, "What an impudent creature to come hither with the bribe in her ear!" "Madam," replied Lady Mary Wortley, who was present," how should people know where wine is sold, unless a bush is hung out." Eventually, the Duke resigned everything to reinstate himself in the old Duchess' will, when she said, "It is very natural; he listed as soldiers do when they are drunk, and repented when he was sober." Sarah, in a letter to Lord Stair, says, "I have made a settlement of a very great estate that is in my own power, upon my grandson, John Spencer, and his sons; but they are to forfeit it if any of them shall ever accept any employment military or civil, or any pension from any King or Queen of this realm, and the estate is to go to others in the entail. This, I think, ought to please everybody; for it will secure my heirs in being very considerable men. None of them can put on a fool's coat, and take posts from soldiers of experience and service, who never did anything but kill pheasants and partridges." With this said will, her son-in-law, the Duke of Montagu, had bound up an old penny history-book, called "The Old Woman's Will of Ratcliffe Highway," only tearing away the title-page of the latter. FINE COURTESY. On one of George the First's journeys to Hanover, his coach broke. At a distance in view was a château of a considerable German nobleman. The King sent to borrow assistance. The possessor came, conveyed the King to his house, and begged the honour of his Majesty accepting a dinner while his carriage was repairing; and while the dinner was preparing, begged leave to amuse his Majesty with a collection of pictures, which he had formed in several tours to Italy. But what did the King see in one of the rooms but an unknown portrait of a person in the robes and with the regalia of the sovereigns of Great Britain! George asked whom it represented. The nobleman replied, with much diffident but decent respect, that in various journeys to Rome he had become acquainted with the Chevalier de St. George, who had done him the honour of sending him that picture. Upon my word," said the King instantly, it is very like to the family." It was impossible to remove the embarrassment of the proprietor with more good breeding.-Walpole's Reminiscences. FLATTERING COMPARISON. When Prince William (afterwards Duke of Cumberland) was a child, he was carried to his grandfather on his birthday, when the King asked him at what hour he rose. The Prince replied, "When the chimney-sweepers went about."-" Vat is de chimney-sweeper?" said the King. "Have you been so long in England," said the boy, "and do you not know what a chimney-sweeper is? Why, they are like that man there;" pointing to Lord Finch, afterwards Earl of Winchelsea and Nottingham, of a family uncommonly dark and swarthy-" the black funereal Finches." THE HUSBAND'S ADVICE. Sir John Germain, a short time before his decease, in 1718, having called his wife to his bedside, said: "Lady Betty, I have made you a very indifferent husband, and particularly of late years, when infirmities have rendered me a burden to myself; but I shall not be much longer troublesome to you. I advise you never again to marry an old man; but I strenuously exhort you to marry when I am gone, and I will endeavour to put it in your power. You have fulfilled every obligation towards me in an exemplary manner, and I wish to demonstrate my sense of your merits. I have, therefore, by my will, bequeathed you this estate,* which I received from 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 * Drayton, in Northamptonshire, "a most venerable heap of ugliness, 'with many eurious bits.' -Walpole 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. Wraxhall. UNLUCKY GARDENING. 66 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, With a clump of Scotch firs, that served for a screen." Walpole's Letters, vol. i. 173. 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 thể 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 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 pewter-pots 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 villany." : 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 |