: II. ; there is that hunchbacked, beetle- | him so? She killed herself because browed Lord Chesterfield; there is she-loved him so. She had the gout, John Hervey, with his deadly smile, and would plunge her feet in cold and ghastly, painted face-I hate water in order to walk with him. them. There is Hoadly, cringing With the film of death over her eyes, from one bishopric to another: yon- writhing in intolerable pain, she yet der comes little Mr. Pope, from had a livid smile and a gentle word Twickenham, with his friend, the for her master. You have read the Irish dean, in his new cassock, bow- wonderful history of that death-bed? ing too, but with rage flashing from How she bade him marry again, under his bushy eyebrows, and scorn and the reply the old King bluband hate quivering in his smile. Can bered out, Non, non j'aurai des you be fond of these? Of Pope maîtresses." There never was such might at least I might love his a ghastly farce. I watch the astongenius, his wit, his greatness, his sen- ishing scene - I stand by that awful sibility with a certain conviction bedside, wondering at the ways in that at some fancied slight, some which God has ordained the lives, sneer which he imagined, he would loves, rewards, successes, passions, turn upon me and stab me. Can you actions, ends of his creatures - and trust the Queen? She is not of our can't but laugh, in the presence of order their very position makes death, and with the saddest heart. kings and queens lonely. One in- In that often-quoted passage from scrutable attachment that inscrutable Lord Hervey, in which the Queen's woman has. To that she is faithful, death-bed is described, the grotesque through all trial, neglect, pain, and horror of the details surpasses all time. Save her husband, she really satire: the dreadful humor of the eares for no created being. She is scene is more terrible than Swift's good enough to her children, and blackest pages, or Fielding's fiercest even fond enough of them: but she irony. The man who wrote the would chop them all up into little story had something diabolical about pieces to please him. In her inter- him: the terrible verses which Pope course with all around her, she was wrote respecting Hervey, in one of perfectly kind, gracious, and natu- his own moods of almost fiendish ral: but friends may die, daughters malignity, I fear are true. I am may depart, she will be as perfectly frightened as I look back into the kind and gracious to the next set. If past, and fancy I behold that ghastly, the King wants her, she will smile beautiful face; as I think of the Queen upon him, be she ever so sad; and writhing on her death-bed, and crywalk with him, be she ever so weary; ing out, Pray! - pray!" - of the and laugh at his brutal jokes, be she royal old sinner by her side, who in ever so much pain of body or heart. kisses her dead lips with frantic grief, Caroline's devotion to her husband is and leaves her to sin no more; - of a prodigy to read of. What charm the bevy of courtly clergymen, and had the little man? What was there the archbishop, whose prayers she rein those wonderful letters of thirty jects, and who are obliged for propages long, which he wrote to her priety's sake to shuffle off the anxwhen he was absent, and to his mis- ious inquiries of the public, and vow tresses at Hanover, when he was in that her Majesty quitted this life "in London with his wife? Why did a heavenly frame of mind." What Caroline, the most lovely and accom- a life! -to what ends devoted! What plished princess of Germany, take a a vanity of vanities! It is a theme little red-faced staring princeling for for another pulpit than the lecturer's. a husband, and refuse an emperor? For a pulpit? I think the part Why, to her last hour, did she love which pulpits play in the deaths of kings is the most ghastly of all the ceremonial: the lying eulogies, the blinking of disagreeable truths, the sickening flatteries, the simulated grief, the falsehood and sycophancies all uttered in the name of Heaven in our State churches: these monstrous threnodies have been sung from time immemorial over kings and queens, good, bad, wicked, licentious. The State parson must bring out his commonplaces; his apparatus of rhetorical black-hangings. Dead king or live king, the clergyman must flatter him. announce his piety whilst living, and when dead, perform the obsequies of "our most religious and gracious king." I read that Lady Yarmouth (my most religious and gracious King's favorite) sold a bishopric to a clergyman for 5,000l. (She betted him 5,000l. that he would not be made a bishop, and he lost, and paid her.) Was he the only prelate of his time led up by such hands for consecration? As I peep into George II.'s St. James's, I see crowds of cassocks rustling up the back-stairs of the ladies of the Court; stealthy clergy slipping purses into their laps; that godless old King yawning under his canopy in his Chapel Royal, as the chaplain before him is discoursing. Discoursing about what? —about righteousness and judgment? Whilst the chaplain is preaching, the King is chattering in German almost as loud as the preacher; so loud that the clergyman-it may be one Dr. Young, he "" wrote Night Thoughts," and discoursed on the splendors of the stars, the glories of heaven, and utter vanities of this world actually burst out crying in his pulpit because the defender of the faith and dispenser of bishoprics would not listen to him! No wonder that the clergy were corrupt and indifferent amidst this indifference and corruption. No wonder that sceptics multiplied and morals degenerated, so far as they depended on the influence of such a king. No who wonder that Whitefield cried out in the wilderness, that Wesley quitted the insulted temple to pray on the hill-side. I look with reverence on those men at that time. Which is the sublimer spectacle the good John Wesley, surrounded by his congregation of miners at the pit's mouth, or the Queen's chaplains mumbling through their morning office in their ante-room, under the picture of the great Venus, with the door opened into the adjoining chamber, where the Queen is dressing, talking scandal to Lord Hervey, or uttering sneers at Lady Suffolk, who is kneeling with the basin at her mistress's side? I say I am scared as I look round at this society at this king, at these courtiers, at these politicians, at these bishops at this flaunting vice and levity. Whereabouts in this Court is the honest man? Where is the pure person one may like? The air stifles one with its sickly perfumes. There are some old-world follies and some absurd ceremonials about our Court of the present day, which I laugh at, but as an Englishman, contrasting it with the past, shall I not acknowledge the change of to-day? As the mistress of St. James's passes me now, I salute the sovereign, wise, moderate, exemplary of life; the good mother; the good wife; the accomplished lady; the enlightened friend of art; the tender sympathizer in her people's glories and sorrows. Of all the Court of George and Caroline, I find no one but Lady Suffolk with whom it seems pleasant and kindly to hold converse. Even the misogynist Croker, who ited her letters, loves her, and has that regard for her with which her swet graciousness seems to have spired almost all men and some women who came near her. I have noted many little traits which go to prove the charms of her character (it is not merely because she is charming, but because she is characteristic, that I allude to her). She writes delightfully sober letters. Addressing Mr. Gay at Tunbridge (he was, you know, | certainly have been a delightful lady: a poet, penniless and in disgrace), she says: "The place you are in, has strangely filled your head with physicians and cures; but, take my word for it, many a fine lady has gone there to drink the waters without being sick; and many a man has complained of the loss of his heart, who had it in his own possession. I desire you will keep yours; for I shall not be very fond of a friend without one, and I have a great mind you should be in the number of mine." "I know a thing that's most uncommon- Handsome, yet witty, and a friend: An equal mixture of good-humor And exquisite soft melancholy. "Has she no faults, then (Envy says), sir? Yes, she has one, I must averWhen all the world conspires to praise her, The woman's deaf, and does not hear!" When Lord Peterborough was seventy years old, that indomitable youth addressed some flaming love, or rather gallantry, letters to Mrs. Even the women concurred in praisHoward-curious relics they are of ing and loving her. The Duchess of the romantic manner of wooing some- Queensberry bears testimony to her times in use in those days. It is not amiable qualities, and writes to her: passion; it is not love; it is gal-"I tell you so and so, because you lantry: a mixture of earnest and acting; high-flown compliments, profound bows, vows, sighs and ogles, in the manner of the Clelie romances, and Millamont and Doricourt in the eomedy. There was a vast elaboration of ceremonies and etiquette, of raptures a regulated form for kneeling and wooing which has quite passed out of our downright manners. Henrietta Howard accepted the noble old earl's philandering; answered the queer love-letters with due acknowledgment; made a profound courtesy to Peterborough's profound bow; and got John Gay to help her in the composition of her letters in reply to her old knight. He wrote her charming verses, in which there was truth as well as grace. "O wonderful creature!" he writes: love children, and to have children love you." The beautiful, jolly Mary Bellenden, represented by contemporaries as "the most perfect creature ever known," writes very pleasantly to her " dear Howard," her "dear Swiss," from the country, whither Mary had retired after her marriage, and when she gave up being a maid of honor. "How do you do, Mrs. Howard?" Mary breaks out." "How do you do, Mrs. Howard? that is all I have to say. This afternoon I am taken with a fit of writing; but as to matter, I have nothing better to entertain you, than news of my farm. I therefore give you the following list of the stock of eatables that I am fatting for my private tooth. It is well known to the whole county of Kent, that I have four fat calves, two fat hogs, fit for killing, twelve prom"O wonderful creature, a woman of rea-ising black pigs, two young chick son! Never grave out of pride, never gay out of season! When so easy to guess who this angel dreamt it was she?" The great Mr. Pope also celebrated her in lines not less pleasant, and painted a portrait of what must ens, three fine geese, with thirteen eggs under each (several being duckeggs, else the others do not come to maturity); all this, with rabbits, and pigeons, and carp in plenty, beef and mutton at reasonable rates. Now, Howard, if you have a mind to stick a knife into anything I have named, say so!" A jolly set must they have been, | James's Park, you still see the marks those maids of honor. Pope intro- along the walk, to note the balls when duces us to a whole bevy of them, in the Court played at Mall. Fancy a pleasant letter. "I went," he says, Birdcage walk now so laid out, and by water to Hampton Court, and Lord John and Lord Palmerston met the Prince, with all his ladies, on knocking balls up and down the ave horseback, coming from hunting. nue! Most of those jolly sports be Mrs. Bellenden and Mrs. Lepell took long to the past, and the good old me into protection, contrary to the games of England are only to be laws against harboring Papists, and found in old novels, in old ballads, or gave me a dinner, with something I the columns of dingy old newspapers, liked better, an opportunity of con- which say how a main of cocks is to versation with Mrs. Howard. We all be fought at Winchester between the agreed that the life of a maid of Winchester men and the Hampton honor was of all things the most men; or how the Cornwall men and miserable, and wished that all women the Devon men are going to hold a who envied it had a specimen of it. great wrestling match at Totnes, and To eat Westphalia ham of a morning, so on. ride over hedges and ditches on borrowed hacks, come home in the heat of the day with a fever, and (what is worse a hundred times) with a red mark on the forehead from an uneasy hat-all this may qualify them to make excellent wives for hunters. As soon as they wipe off the heat of the day, they must simper an hour and catch cold in the Princess's apartment; from thence to dinner with what appetite they may; and after that till midnight, work, walk, or think which way they please. No lone house in Wales, with a mountain and rookery, is more contemplative than this Court. Miss Lepell walked with me three or four hours by moonlight, and we met no creature of any quality but the King, who gave audience to the vice-chamberlain all alone under the garden wall." A hundred and twenty years ago there were not only country towns in England, but people who inhabited them. We were very much more gregarious; we were amused by very simple pleasures. Every town had its fair, every village its wake. The old poets have sung a hundred jolly ditties about great cudgel-playings, famous grinning through horse-collars, great may-pole meetings, and morris-dances. The girls used to run races clad in very light attire; and the kind gentry and good parsons thought no shame in looking on. Dancing bears went about the country with pipe and tabor. Certain wellknown tunes were sung all over the land for hundreds of years, and high and low rejoiced in that simple music. Gentlemen who wished to entertain their female friends constantly sent I fancy it was a merrier England, for a band. When Beau Fielding, a that of our ancestors, than the island mighty fine gentleman, was courting which we inhabit. People high and the lady whom he married, he treated low amused themselves very much her and her companion at his lodgings more. I have calculated the manner to a supper from the tavern, and after in which statesmen and persons of supper they sent out for a fiddler, condition passed their time-and three of them. Fancy the three, in a what with drinking, and dining, and great wainscoted room, in Covent supping, and cards, wonder how they Garden or Soho, lighted by two or got through their business at all. three candles in silver sconces, some They played all sorts of games, which, grapes and a bottle of Florence wine with the exception of cricket and ten- on the table, and the honest fiddler nis, have quite gone out of our man- playing old tunes in quaint old minor ners now. In the old prints of St.keys, as the Beau takes out one lady after the other, and solemnly dances with her! The very great folks, young noblemen, with their governors, and the like, went abroad and made the great tour; the home satirists jeered at the Frenchified and Italian ways which they brought back; but the greater number of people never left the country. The jolly squire often had never been twenty miles from home. Those who did go went to the baths, to Harrogate, or Scarborough, or Bath, or Epsom. Old letters are full of these places of pleasure. Gay writes to us about the fiddlers at Tunbridge; of the ladies having merry little private balls amongst themselves; and the gentlemen entertaining them by turns with tea and music. One of the young beauties whom he met did not care for tea: "We have a young lady here," he says, that is very particular in her desires. I have known some young ladies, who, if ever they prayed, would ask for some equipage or title, a husband or matadores: but this lady, who is but seventeen, and has 30,000l. to her fortune, places all her wishes on a pot of good ale. When her friends, for the sake of her shape and complexion, would dissuade her from it, she answers, with the truest sincerity, that by the loss of shape and complexion she could only lose a husband, whereas ale is her passion." Every country town had its assembly-room-mouldy old tenements, which we may still see in deserted inn-yards, in decayed provincial cities, out of which the great wen of London has sucked all the life. York, at assize times, and throughout the winter, harbored a large society of northern gentry. Shrewsbury was celebrated for its festivities. At Newmarket, I read of "a vast deal of good company, besides rogues and blacklegs; at Norwich, of two assemblies, with a prodigious crowd in the hall, the rooms, and the gallery. In Cheshire (it is a maid of honor of Queen Caroline who writes, and who is longing to be back at Hampton Court, and the fun there) I peep into a country house, and see a very merry party: "We meet in the work-room before nine, eat, and break a joke or two till twelve, then we repair to our own chambers and make ourselves ready, for it cannot be called dressing. At noon the great bell fetches us into a parlor, adorned with all sorts of fine arms, poisoned darts, several pairs of old boots and shoes worn by men of might, with the stirrups of King Charles I., taken from him at Edgehill," and there they have their dinner, after which comes dancing and supper. As for Bath, all history went and bathed and drank there. George II. and his Queen, Prince Frederick and his court, scarce a character one can mention of the early last century, but was seen in that famous Pump Room where Beau Nash presided, and his picture hung between the busts of Newton and Pope : "This picture, placed these busts between, I should like to have seen the Folly. It was a splendid, embroidered, beruffled, snuff-boxed, red-heeled, impertinent Folly, and knew how to make itself respected. I should like to have seen that noble old madcap Peterborough in his boots (he actually. had the audacity to walk about Bath in boots!), with his blue ribbon and stars, and a cabbage under each arm, and a chicken in his hand, which he had been cheapening for his dinner. Chesterfield came there many a time and gambled for hundreds, and grinned through his gout. Mary Wortley was there, young and beautiful; and Mary Wortley, old, hideous, and snuffy. Miss Chudleigh came there, slipping away from one husband, and on the look-out for another. Walpole passed many a day there; sickly, supercilious, absurdly dandified, and affected; with a brilliant wit, a delightful sensibility; and for |