sels of her favourites, they were not restrained, by the fear of her resentment, from abusing indulged power, and violating the obligations of gratitude. Although she had imbibed all the keenness of a party spirit, yet she was deterred from pursuing its impulse by the first appearance of danger. She discarded the tories, who, from the confidence of her patronage at the beginning of her reign, were running into a course of measures, tending to the disunion of her subjects, and the danger of the protestant succession. Under the awe of a ruling junto, she gave her sanction to the continuance of the war, contrary to the bent of her own judgement and feelings, at a time when she had the opportunity of putting an end to it, upon terms more advantageous for Britain, than those which were finally obtained. Harassed at the close of her days by the jealousies of the whigs, and their urging securities for the protestant settlement, which did violence to her affections, she was prevented by the apprehension of personal danger, more than by principle or inclination, from taking any resolute steps for transferring the succession of the crown to her brother. "She had high notions of prerogative, which however produced no worse effect, than rendering her partial to its advocates. The ingratitude of her first favourites rendered queen Anne more suspicious and guarded, after their dismission; and a distrust of her ministers, and an unwillingness to yield to their advice in the last years of her reign, were one cause of their slowness in the prosecution of that system of measures, which was expected from the promises they had made to the tories, before they came into power. They had gained the queen's favour by recommending to her the exercise of independent authority; and this made her afterwards the more positive in resisting any proposal which did not immediately meet with herapprobation. "This princess has had the singular fate of being both praised, and condemned, for her conduct as a relation. By one party she has been represented as an amiable pattern of domestic tenderness; and by another, as an odious example of filial depravity. She was a kind and dutiful wife; and though encumbered with the cares of royalty, and depressed with bodily infirmi ties, she never omitted the minutest conjugal respect, and attended the sick-bed of her husband with sympathy and tenderness almost unexampled in the higher ranks of life. She loved her children with the fondest affection, and paid the most assiduous attention to their health and education. But she has been accused of hard-heartedness in abandoning her father in the hour of his extremity. "While we ascribe what all have approved of, in the domestic be haviour of Anne, to a sense of duty, and her own native disposition, we ought not to overlook those peculiar circumstances in her situation, which afford some apology for the suspension of natural affection, though they do not amount to a justification of it. The habit of a blind deference to the advice of lord and lady Churchill, and a conscientious auxiety for the protestant religion, exposed to the extremity of danger, stifled the emotions of filial tenderness, in a moment of singular agitation and perplexity, and precipitated her into an action, which would have been inexcusable, if it had been the result of cool cool deliberation, and originated from motives of interest and ambition. "In all the different stations she filled, this princess had the merit of observing the strictest rules of œconomy, in the management of her fortune; while she was not deficient in charity, and exceeded in bounty to her favourites. "In the discharge of religious duties, she was regular and exemplary. Her zeal for the prosperity of the church was attested by extending the means of the public instructions; by augmenting, at her own expence, the livings of the poor clergy; and by expressing, on all occasions, a solicitude for the purity of the clerical character. "She possessed a considerable degree of taste for the fine arts; amused herself with music and painting; and delivered her public speeches with a melodious propriety, that charmed the ears of her audience. "The deceitfulness of grandeur, as a criterion of happiness, has often been inferred from the condition of royalty; and was remarkably verified in the life and reign of queen Anne. We behold a nation rising, under her auspices, to the sammit of prosperity. While signal success crowned her military exertions abroad, agriculture, commerce, manufactures, science, and literature, advanced, with rapid steps, at home; every event, and every improvement, which contribute to the opulence, the power, and the renown of a nation, distinguish the reign of queen Anne, as the most propitious and brillant recorded in the Annals of Britain. But when we follow this princess into retirement and survey the incidents of her private life, what a contrasted scene discloses itself to view; and how much are we struck with the wide distinction between external grandeur, and personal felicity! "She survived a numerous family of children; the duke of Gloucester, destined by the act of settlement to succeed her, lived to the age of twelve; and exhibited early blossoms of every accomplishment that could elevate the hopes of a nation and delight the heart of a parent. "She possession of a crown, held upon the condition of ratifying the degradation and exile of her own family must have cost her many a pang, which she durst not impart to the most confidential friends. While looked up to as the first potentate in Europe, and loaded with congratulations upon the success of her arms, she was a slave in her own house; and subjected to daily affronts and mortifications, from the insolence and usurpations of her servants. Emancipated, at length, from her chains, she only entered upon a new scene of vexation and trial; and all her remaining days were embittered by the jealousies of her people, the turbulence of faction, and the contentions and outrage of a distracted cabinet." CHARACTER CHARACTER of QUEEN CAROLINE. [From the fourth Volume of the Works of HORATIA WALPOLE, Earl of Orford.] "Q UEEN Caroline was said to have been very handsome at her marriage, soon after which sbe had the small-pox; but was little marked by it, and retained a most pleasing countenance. It was full of majesty or mildness as she pleased, and her penetrating eyes expressed whatever she had a mind they should. Her voice too was captivating, and her hands beautifully small, plump and graceful. Her understanding was uncommonly strong; and so was her resolution. From their earliest connection she had determined to govern the king, and deserved to do so; for her submission to his will was unbounded, her sense much superior, and his honour and interest always took place of her own: so that her love of power, that was predominant, was dearly bought, and rarely ill-employed. She was ambitious too of fame; but shackled by her devotion to the king, she seldom could pursue that object. She wished to be a patroness of learned men but George had no respect for them or their works; and her majesty's own taste was not very exquisite, nor did he allow her time to cultivate any studies. Her generosity would have displayed itself, for she valued money but as the instrument of her good purposes; but he stinted her alike in almost all her passions; and though she wished for nothing more than to be liberal, she bore the imputation of his avarice, as she did of others of his faults. Of ten when she had made prudent and proper promises of preferment, and could not persuade the king to comply, she suffered the breach of word to fall on her, rather than reflect on bim. Though his affection and confidence in her were implicit, he lived in dread of being supposed to be governed by her; and that silly parade was extended even to the most private moments of business with my father: whenever he entered, the queen rose, curtsied and retired, or offered to retire. Sometimes the king condescended to bid her stay-on both occasions she and sir Robert had previously settled the business to be discussed. Sometimes the king would quash the proposal in question; and yield after re-talking it over with her-but then he boasted to sir Robert that he himself had better considered it. "One of the queen's delights was the improvement of the garden at Richmond; and the king believed she had paid for all with her own money-nor would he ever look at her intended plaus, saying, he did not care how she flung away her own revenue. He little suspected the aids sir Robert furnished to her from the treasury. When she died, she was indebted twenty thousand pounds to the king. "Her learning, I have said, was superficial; her knowledge of languages as little accurate. The king, with a bluff Westphalian accent, spoke English correctly. The queen's chief study was divinity; and she had rather weakened her faith than enlightened it. She was at least not orthodox; and her confidante lady Sundon, an absurd and pompous simpleton, swayed her countenance towards towards the less-believing clergy. The queen however was so sincere at her death, that when archbishop Potter was to administer the sacrament to her, she declined taking it, very few persons being in the room. When the prelate retired, the courtiers in the anti-room crowded round him, crying, My lord, has the queen received? His grace artfully eluded the question, only say ing most devoutly, her majesty, was in a heavenly disposition' and the truth escaped the public, "She suffered more unjustly by declining to see ber son, the prince of Wales, to whom she sent her blessing and forgiveness-but conceiving the extreme distress it would lay on the king, should he thus be forced to forgive so impenitent a son, or to banish him again if once recalled, she heroically preferred a meritorious husband to a worthless child. Robert Walpole, was maintained by him in spite of his attachment to lady Suffolk. "The queen's great secret was her own rupture, which till her last illness nobody knew but the king, her German nurse Mrs. Mailborne, and one other person. To prevent all suspicion, her majesty would frequently stand for some minutes in her shift talking to her ladies; and though labouring with so dan gerous a complaint, she made it so invariable a rule never to refuse a desire of the king, that every morn ing at Richmond she walked several miles with him; and more than once, when she had the gout in her foot, she dipped her whole leg in cold water to be ready to attend him. The pain, her bulk, and the exercise, threw her into such fits of perspiration as vented the goutbut those exertions hastened the crisis of her distemper. It was great "The queen's greatest error was shrewdness in sir Robert Walpole, too high an opinion of her own ad- who, before her distemper broke dress and art: she imagined that all out, discovered her secret. On my who did not dare to contradict her, mother's death, who was of the were imposed upon; and she had queen's age, her majesty asked sir the additional weakness of think Robert many physical questionsing that she could play off many but he remarked, that she oftenest persons without being discovered. reverted to a rupture, which had That mistaken humour, and at other not been the illness of his wife. times her hazarding very offensive When he came home, he said to me, truths, made her many enemies: Now, Horace, I know by possesand her duplicity in fomenting jea-sion of what secret lady Sundon has lousies between the ministers, that preserved such an ascendant over each might be more dependent on herself, was no sound wisdom. It was the queen who blew into a flame the ill-blood between sir Robert Walpole and his brother-in-law lord Townshend. Yet though she disliked some of the cabinet, she never let her own prejudices disturb the king's affairs, provided the ob noxious paid no court to the mistress. Lord Ilay was the only man, who, by managing Scotland for sir 'the queen.' He was in the right. How lady Sundon had wormed herself into that mystery was never known. As sir Robert maintained his influence over the clergy by Gibson bishop of London, he often met with troublesome obstructions from lady Sundon, who espoused, as I have said, the heterodox clergy; and sir Robert could never shake her credit. "Yet the queen was constant in her protection of sir Robert, and the day before she died gave a strong mark of her conviction that he was the firmest support the king had. As they two alone were standing by the queen's bed, she pathetically recommended, not the minister to the sovereign, but the master to the servant. Sir Robert was alarmed, and feared the recommendation would leave a fatal impression-but a short time after, the king, reading with sit Robert some intercepted letters from Germany, which said, that now the queen was gone sir Robert would have no protection: On the contrary,' said the king, you know she recom'mended me to you.' This marked the notice he had taken of the expression; and it was the only notice he ever took of it; nay, his majesty's grief was so excessive and so sincere, that his kindness to his minister seemed to increase for the queen's sake. "The queen's dread of a rival was a feminine weakness: the behaviour of her eldest son was a real thorn. He early displayed his aver sion to his mother, who perhaps assumed too much at first; yet it is certain that her good sense and the interest of her family would have prevented if possible the mutual dislike of the father and son, and their reciprocal contempt. As the opposition gave into all adulation towards the prince, his ill-poised head and vanity swallowed all their incense. He even early after his arrival had listened to a high act of disobedience. Money he soon wanted: old Sarah, duchess of Marlborough, ever proud and ever malignant, was persuaded to offer her favourite grand-daughter, lady Diana Spencer, afterwards duchess of Bedford, to the prince of Wales, with a fortune of an hundred thousand pounds. He accepted the proposal, and the day was fixed for their being secretly married at the duchess's lodge in the great park at Windsor. Sir Robert Walpole got intelligence of the project, prevented it, and the secret was buried in silence. "Youth, folly, and indiscretion, the beauty of the young lady, and a large sum of ready money, might have offered something like a plea for so rash a marriage, had it taken place: but what could excuse, what indeed could provoke, the senseless and barbarous insult offered to the king and queen by Frederic's taking his wife out of the palace of Hamp ton-court in the middle of the night, when she was in actual labour, and carrying her, at the imminent risk of the lives of her and the child, to the unaired palace and bed at St. James's? Had he no way of affronting his parents but by venturing to kill his wife and the heir of the crown? A baby that wounds itself to vex its nurse is not more void of reflection. The scene which commenced by unfeeling idiotism closed with paltry hypocrisy. The queen, on the first notice of her son's exploit, set out for St. James's to visit the princess by seven in the morning. The gracious prince, so far from attempting an apology, spoke not a word to his mother; but on her retreat gave her his hand, led her into the street to her coach-still dumb!-but a crowd being assembled at the gate, he kneeled down in the dirt, and humbly kissed her majesty's hand. Her indignation must have shrunk into contempt!" |