CHAPTER XVII.

Queen Caroline.

No rank can expect to be free from the common visitations of life; and George the Fourth, always much attached to his relatives, had suffered, within a few years, the loss of his royal mother;* of his brother, the Duke of Kent,† but a week before the death of his father; and of his daughter, the Princess Charlotte;-all regretted by the nation; but the loss of the last creating an unexampled sorrow.

The Princess Charlotte, with a spirit of independence unusual in her rank, making her own choice, and marrying Prince Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg, had increased the popular affection for the heiress of the throne, by the remarkable propriety and domestic nature of her life during the year of her marriage. But her constitution was feeble; and when she was about to become a mother, it seems to have been unable to resist that perilous time. She gave birth to a still-born child, and, in a few hours after, unhappily sank into a state of exhaustion, and died. The nation received the unexpected and painful intelligence as if every family had lost a daughter and an heir. Before the customary orders for mourning and the other marks of public respect could be issued, all England exhibited the deepest signs of spontaneous homage and sorrow. All public places were voluntarily closed; all entertainments laid aside; the churches hung with black by the people, and funeral sermons preached every where at their request: the streets 6th Nov. 1817.

17th Nov. 1818. † 23d Jan. 1820.

deserted; marriages suspended; journeys put off; the whole system of society stopped, as if it had received an irreparable blow. The English residents abroad all put on mourning; and as the intelligence passed through the world, every spot where an Englishman was to be found, witnessed the same evidence of the sincerest national sorrow.

If such were the loss to the people, what must it have been to him, who added his feelings as a father to those for the broken hope of his line; and lamenting over an innocent and fond being, dead in the most exulting moment of a woman's and a wife's existence, saw before him the death-bed of two royal generations!

But he had scarcely ascended the throne when perplexities, if of a less painful kind, of a more harassing one, awaited him. The Princess Caroline, his consort, who had long resided in Italy, announced her determination of returning to England, and demanding the appointments and rank of queen. Her life abroad had given rise to the grossest imputations; and her presiding at the court of England, while those imputations continued, would have been intolerable. But the means adopted to abate the offence argued a singular ignorance of human nature. If we must not subscribe to the poetic extravaganza, that

"Hell has no fury like a woman scorned,"

it ought to have been remembered, that woman, once thoroughly irritated, sets no bounds to her vengeance. The "furens quid fœmina possit," is as old as human nature: yet this violent woman had been insulted by the conduct of every English functionary abroad. The announcement of her approach to a city where an English ambassador resided, instantly threw his entire microcosm into a state of chaos: diplomacy forswore her dances and dinners;

the whole accomplished tribe of attachés were in dismay; the chief functionary shut up his doors and windows, ordered post-horses, and giving himself only time to pen a hurried despatch to the foreign office, detailing the vigour with which he had performed this national duty, fled as if he were flying from a pestilence. Foreigners, of course, with their usual adoption of the ambassadorial tone, added their laughter; until, stung by universal offence, she no sooner received the announcement of the death of George the Third, than, defying all remonstrance, and spurning the tardy attempts of ministers to conciliate her, she rushed back to England, flaming with revenge.*

Lord Liverpool was utterly unequal to the emergency: always hitherto a feeble, unpurposed, and timid minister, he now put on a preposterous courage, and defied this desperate woman. He might better have taken a tiger by the beard. He had even the folly to bring her to trial. With what ultimate object is utterly inconceivable. That he could not have obtained a divorce by any law human or divine, the reasons were obvious. If she had been found guilty, he could have neither exiled nor imprisoned her; his only resource must be her decapitation. But he knew that the people of England would have risen indignantly against so cruel and horrid a sentence. There was but one alternative remaining to be defeated; and defeated he was, totally, helplessly, ignominiously.

The queen was probably a criminal, to the full extent of the charge. But there had been so long a course of espionage, which the English mind justly abhors, the practices against her had been so pitiful, and the details of the evidence were so repulsive, that the crime was forgotten in the public scorn of the accusers. This feeling, however suppressed in

* June, 1820.

the higher ranks, took its open way with the multitude; and while ministers were forced to steal down to the house, or were visible, only to receive all species of insults from the mob, the queen went daily to her trial in a popular triumph. Her levees at Brandenburg House, a small villa on the banks of the Thames, where she resided for the season, were still more triumphant. Daily processions of the people filled the road. The artisans marched with the badges of their callings; the brotherhoods of trade; the masonic lodges; the friendly societies; all the nameless incorporations, which make their charters without the aid of office, and give their little senates laws; down to the fish-women; paid their respects in full costume, and assured her majesty, in many a high-flown piece of eloquence, of her "living in the hearts of her faithful people."

There was, doubtless, some charlatanry in the display. Many interests are concerned in every move of the popular machine. The inn-keepers on the road were the richer for this loyalty; the turnpikes reaped a handsomer revenue; the Jews sold more of that finery which has seen its best days; the coachmakers issued more of their veteran barouches; the horse-dealers supplied more of those hunters and chargers which have bade a long farewell to all their fields. All the trades were zealous promoters of the processions. The holyday, the summer drive, the dress, the "hour's importance to the poor man's heart," were not to be forgotten among the accessories. But the true motive, paramount to all, was honest English disdain at the mode in which the evidence had been collected, and the mixture of weakness and violence with which the prosecution was carried on. Concession after concession was forced from ministers. The title of queen was acknowledged; and finally, Lord Liverpool, beaten in the lords, and become an object of outrageous detestation to the populace, admitted that he could pro

ceed no further, and withdrew the prosecution. The announcement was received with a roar of victory in the house. The sound was caught by the multitude, and London was filled with acclamations.

The graver judgment of the country regretted, that by the rashness which suffered a question of individual vice to be mingled with one of public principle, the crime received the sanction which belonged only to the virtue. But the deed was done, and the only hope now was, that it might be speedily forgotten. But this the queen would not suffer: the furious passions of the woman were still unappeased. She took a house within sight of the palace, that she might present the perpetual offence of her mobs to the royal eye; she libelled the king; she pursued him to public places; and persevered in this foolish vindictiveness, until she completely lost the sympathy of the people. At length, advised only by her own hot and bitter heart, she determined to insult him at the coronation,* in the presence of his nobles, and in the highest ceremonial of his throne.

But this fine display of the old pomps of England has been commemorated by so celebrated a master of description, that any fragment from his pen on such a subject must supersede all other. It has a monumental value.

SIR WALTER SCOTT'S LETTER ON THE CORONATION.

"I refer you to the daily papers for the details of the great national assembly which we witnessed yesterday, and will hold my promise absolved by sending a few general remarks upon what I saw, with surprise amounting to astonishment, and which I shall never forget. It is indeed impossible to conceive a ceremony more august and imposing in all its parts, and more calculated to make the deepest

*19th July, 1821.