Addresses rapidly flowed in from the leading public bodies that of the city seemed to have embodied the substance of the chief popular testimonials. After congratulating his majesty on the birth, it alluded to the Hanover succession. "So important an event, and upon a day ever sacred to liberty, fills us with the most grateful sentiments to the Divine Goodness, which has thus early crowned your majesty's domestic happiness, and opened to your people the agreeable prospect of permanence and stability to the blessings which they derive from the wisdom and steadiness of your majesty's victorious reign." This was courteous. But the addresses of the clergy were observed to be generally in a higher tone; and the address of the clergy of the province of Canterbury was distinguished by a direct appeal to those great doctrines on which the constitution stands. The king's answer was manly, and suitable to the free king of a free people. "He saw with peculiar pleasure their gratitude to Heaven for the birth of a Protestant heir. Their confidence in his fixed intention to educate the prince in every principle of civil and religious liberty, was truly acceptable to him; and he desired them to rely upon him for observing his pledges to the empire, and for leaving nothing undone that could promote the sacred interests of Christian piety and moral virtue, and transmit to posterity our most happy constitution."

The fickleness of popularity is the oldest lesson of public life: yet the sudden change of public feeling towards George the Third is among its most remarkable and unaccountable examples. No European throne had been ascended for the last hundred years by a sovereign more qualified by nature and circumstances to win "golden opinions" from his people. Youth, striking appearance, a fondness not less for the gay and graceful amusements of court life than for those field sports which make the popular indulgence of the English landholder, a strong sense of the national value of scientific and literary pursuits, piety unquestionably sincere, and morals on which even satire never dared to throw a stain, were the claims of the king to the approbation of his people. In all those points also the contrast of the new reign with those of the two preceding monarchs was signally in its favour.

Horace Walpole, a man rendered caustic by a sense of personal failure, and whose pen delighted to fling sarcasm on all times and men; for once forgets his nature, and gives way to panegyric in speaking of the young king. The new reign

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I

begins with great propriety and decency. There is great dignity and grace in the king's manner. don't say this, like my dear Madame de Sevigné, because he was civil to me; but the part is well acted. The young king has all the appearance of being amiable. There is great grace to temper

much dignity, and a good nature which breaks all occasions."

out upon

The choice of Lord Bute as his prime minister, tarnished all the king's qualities in the general eye. Insinuations that this hansdome nobleman owed his rank at once to the passion of the princess dowager, and to arbitrary principles in the king, — insinuations never substantiated, and in their nature altogether improbable, were enough to turn the spirit of that multitude who take their opinions from the loudest clamourer. Wilkes, a man broken in fortune, and still more broken in character, hopeless of returning to the ranks of honourable life, and both too notorious and too intemperate to be fit for any thing but faction, had been buoyed up into a bastard influence chiefly by the national jealousy of Scotland. *

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But Lord Bute had soon ceased to be the object. A nobler quarry was found in the king. The eagle towering in his pride of place, was by the mousing owl hawked at ;" and though not degraded in the opinion of men of honour and virtue, yet, with the multitude, his intentions were vilified, his personal qualities were turned into caricature, and

"No petticoat government no Scotch minister - and no Lord George Sackville," were the watchwords of the time, placarded on the walls, and echoed by the mob: the three combining all the grievances of a party, afflicted by that most angry of all distempers- the desire to get into place.

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his popularity was suddenly obscured, if not extinguished, by the arts of a demagogue, scandalous and criminal in every mode by which the individual can earn exclusion from society.

Princes soon become public personages; and it cannot be denied that his royal highness displayed himself at a sufficiently early age; for in 1765 he received a deputation from the Society of Ancient Britons, on St. David's day. The prince's answer to their address was certainly not long, for it was simply -"He thanked them for this mark of duty to the king, and wished prosperity to the charity." Though probably an carlier specch has been seldom made; for the speaker was not quite three years old. But it was not lost on the courtiers. They declared it to have been delivered with the happiest grace of manner and action; and that the features of future oratory were more than palpable: all which we are bound to believe. In December of the same year he was invested with the order of the garter, along with the Earl of Albemarle and the hereditary Prince of Brunswick.

CHAPTER III.

THE PRINCE'S EDUCATION.

THE prince had now reached a period when it became necessary to commence his education. Lord Holdernesse, a nobleman of considerable attainments, but chiefly recommended by his dignity of manner and knowledge of the court, was appointed governor: Dr. Markham and Cyril Jackson were the preceptor and sub-preceptor.

Markham had attracted the royal notice by his celebrity as a schoolmaster. At the age of thirty he had soared to the height of professional glory; for he was placed at the head of Westminster School, where he taught for fourteen years. The masters of the leading schools are generally cheered by some church dignity, and Markham received the deanery of Christ Church: from this he had been transferred to Chester; and it was while he was in possession of the bishopric, that he was selected for the preceptorship of the Prince of Wales.

But this private plan of education was severely criticised. It was pronounced to be a secluded, solitary, and narrow scheme for court thraldom,