was a direct refusal to interfere, formally conveyed through the ministers.

Family quarrels are proverbial for exhibiting errors on both sides; and even the quarrel on this occasion, high as the personages were, made no exception to the rule. The prince was treated sternly; in return, the prince acted rashly. The royal indignation might have been justly softened by recollecting the inexperience, the almost inevitable associates, and the strong temptations of the heir apparent; and the measure ought to have been made an act of favour, which was so soon discovered to be an act of necessity. On the other hand, the prince, impetuously, on the day after the royal answer, broke up his household, dismissed his officers in attendance, ordered his horses to be sold, shut up every apartment of his palace not required for immediate personal accommodation, and commenced living the life of a hermit, which he called that of a private gentleman; his political friends, that of an ancient sage; and the court, that of a young rebel. The decided impression on the king's mind was, that this sudden resolution was suggested by individuals whose first object was to enlist the sympathies of the nation against the minister, and who also had no reluctance to see the king involved in the disgrace of his cabinet. A remarkable incident at this period made the alienation palpable to the empire. Margaret Nicholson's attempt to assassinate the

an attempt which failed only from the accidental bending of the knife, had been immediately communicated to all the authorities, and the principal persons connected with the royal famy, with but one exception. To the prince no communication was made. He heard it at Brighton, and hastened to Windsor, where he was recessed by the queen alone. The king was inaccessible.

But the system of seclusion was too little adapted to the great party who had now totally engrossed the direction of the prince; and too repulsive to the natural habits of rank and birth, to last long. The windows of Carlton House were gradually opened, and the deserted halls gave their pomps to the light once more. His advisers prompted him to strengthen his public influence by private hospitality; and, from all the records of those years, we must believe that no host possessed more abundantly the charm of giving additional zest to the luxuries of the banquet. He now began to give frequent entertainments; from personal pleasure, the feeling grew into political interest; and it was at length resolved, that the price owed it to his own character to shew that he was not afraid of public investigation.

The opening of the budget was considered a proper time, and the subject was confided to the

hands of Alderman Newnham, no orator, but a man of mercantile wealth and personal respectability. This advocate contented himself, in the first instance, with a brief panegyric on the prince's efforts to meet his difficulties; and a demand whether ministers intended to bring forward any proposition for retrieving his affairs.

Concluding with the words, that "though the conduct of that illustrious individual under his difficulties reflected the highest honour on his character, yet nothing could be surer to bring indelible disgrace upon the nation, than suffering him to remain any longer in his present embarrassed circumstances."

"It

Pitt's reply was short but peremptory. was not his duty to bring forward a subject of the nature that had been mentioned, without his majesty's commands. It was not necessary, therefore, that he should say more, than that on the present occasion he had not been honoured with any such command."

The campaign was now fairly begun, and opposition determined to crush the minister. Private meetings were held, friends were summoned, and the strength of parties was about to be tried in a shock which, in its results, might have shattered the constitution. Pitt's sagacity saw the coming storm, and he faced it with the boldness that formed a prominent quality of his great character. He sternly denounced the subject, as

one not merely delicate but dangerous; he warned the mover of this hazardous matter of the evils which rashness must produce; and concluded a short but powerful address, by threatening to call for "disclosures which must plunge the nation into the most formidable perplexity." While the house were listening with keen anxiety to this lofty menace, and expecting on what head the lightnings were to be launched, Pitt renewed the charge, by turning full on the opposition bench, and declaring, that if the "honourable member should persist in his determination to bring his motion forward again, his majesty's government would be compelled to take the steps which they should adopt; and that, for his own part, however distressing it might be to his personal feelings, from his profound respect for the royal family, he had a public duty to discharge which he would discharge, freely, fairly, and unconditionally.'

A succession of debates followed, in which the whole vigour of party, and no slight portion of its virulence, was displayed. Rolle, the member for Devonshire, with a superabundant zeal, which exposed him naked to all the fiery wrath of Sheridan and Fox, and lifted him up as a general mark for the shafts of opposition wit, had embodied Pitt's mysterious charge into "matters by which church and state might be seriously affected,”— an allusion understood to refer to the rumoured marriage of the prince with Mrs. Fitzherbert.

Sheridan, with contemptuous pleasantry, denied the truth of the report, which he said" the slight share of understanding that nature had vouchsafed to him, was altogether unable to comprehend; though, to be sure, something of his ignorance might be accounted for by his not being peculiarly fond of putting himself in the established school for this kind of learning. Among all the shows to which curiosity had led him in the metropolis, he had unfortunately omitted the Whispering gallery in the neighbourhood of Whitehall. He was also confident that there was a great deal of recondite knowledge to be picked up by any diligent student who had taken his degree on the back stairs, and he duly commended the progress the honourable gentleman had made in those profitable studies. For his own part, Heaven help him! he had always found the treasury passages at best, cold, dark, and cheerless; he believed the conscience as well as the body might have a rheumatic touch; and he acknowledged that he was never the better for the experiment. But where he had heard only the ominous cries and wailings of the wind; the ears of others, more happily disposed, might be more fortunate; where he heard only the rage of Auster and Eurus, to others Auster might come

the zephyr perfumed from my lady's bedchamber;' and Eurus be the

—' purpureo spirans ab ortu, eois Eurus equis.'