GEORGE THE THIRD. We have to glance over sixty years in as many minutes. To read the mere catalogue of characters who figured during that long period, would occupy our allotted time, and we should have all text and no sermon. England has to undergo the revolt of the American colonies; to submit to defeat and separation; to shake under the volcano of the French Revolution; to grapple and fight for the life with her gigantic enemy Napolcon; to gasp and rally after that tremendous struggle. The old society, with its courtly splendors, has to pass away; generations of statesmen to rise and disappear; Pitt to follow Chatham to the tomb; the memory of Rodney and Wolfe to be superseded by Nelson's and Wellington's glory; the old poets who unite us to Queen Anne's time to sink into their graves; Johnson to die, and Scott and Byron to arise; Garrick to delight the world with his dazzling dramatic genius, and Kean to leap on the stage and take possession of the astonished theatre. Steam has to be invented; kings to be beheaded, banished, deposed, restored. Napoleon to be but an episode, and George III. is to be alive through all these varied changes, to accompany his people through all these revolutions of thought, government, society; to survive out of the old world into ours. When I first saw England, she was in mourning for the young Princess Charlotte, the hope of the empire. I came from India as a child, and our ship touched at an island on the way home, where my black servant took me a long walk over rocks and hills until we reached a garden, where we saw a man walking. "That is he," said the black man: "that is Bona parte! He cats three sheep every day, and all the little children he can lay hands on!" There were people in the British dominions besides that poor Calcutta serving-man, with an equal horror of the Corsican ogre. With the same childish attendant, I remember peeping through the colonnade at Carleton House, and seeing the abode of the great Prince Regent. I can see yet the Guards pacing before the gates of the place. The place! What place? The palace exists no more than the palace of Nebuchadnezzar. It is but a name now. Where be the sentries who used to salute as the Royal chariots drove in and out? The chariots, with the kings inside, have driven to the realms of Pluto; the tall Guards have marched into darkness, and the echoes of their drums are rolling in Hades. Where the palace once stood, a hundred little children are paddling up and down the steps to St. James's Park. A score of grave gentlemen are taking their tea at the "Athenæum Club;" as many grizzly warriors are garrisoning the "United Service Club" opposite. Pall Mall is the great social Exchange of London now the mart of news, of politics, of scandal, of rumor the English forum, so to speak, where men discuss the last despatch from the Crimea, the last speech of Lord Derby, the next move of Lord John. And, now and then, to a few antiquarians whose thoughts are with the past rather than with the present, it is a memorial of old times and old people, and Pall Mall is our Palmyra. Look! About this spot Tom of Ten Thousand was killed by Königsmarck's gang. In that great red house Gainsborough lived, and Culloden Cumberland, George III.'s uncle: Yonder is Sarah Marlborough's palace, just as it stood when that termagant occupied it. At 25, Walter Scott used to live; at the house, now No. 79,* and occupied by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, resided Mrs. Eleanor Gwynn, comedian. How often has Queen Caroline's chair issued from under yonder arch! All the men of the Georges have passed up and down the street. It has seen Walpole's chariot and Chatham's sedan; and Fox, Gibbon, Sheridan, on their way to Brookes's; and stately William Pitt stalking on the arm of Dundas; and Hanger and Tom Sheridan reeling out of Raggett's; and Byron limping into Wattier's; and Swift striding out of Bury Street; and Mr. Addison and Dick Steele, both perhaps a little the better for liquor; and the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York clattering over the pavement; and Johnson counting the posts along the streets, after dawdling before Dodsley's window; and Harry Walpole hobbling into his carriage, with a gimcrack just bought at Christie's; and George Selwyn sauntering into White's. In the published letters to George Selwyn we get a mass of correspondence by no means so brilliant and witty as Walpole's, or so bitter and bright as Hervey's, but as interesting, and even more descriptive of the time, because the letters are the work of many hands. You hear more voices speaking, as it were, and more natural than Horace's dandified treble, and Sporus's malignant whisper. As one reads the Selwyn letters -as one looks at Reynolds's noble pictures illustrative of those magnificent times and voluptuous people one almost hears the voice of the dead past; the laughter and the chorus; the toast called over the brimming cups; the shout at the racecourse or the gamingtable; the merry joke frankly spoken to the laughing fine lady. How fine * 1856. those ladies were, those ladies who heard and spoke such coarse jokes; how grand those gentlemen! I fancy that peculiar product of the past, the fine gentleman, has almost vanished from off the face of the earth, and is disappearing like the beaver or the Red Indian. We can't have fine gentlemen any more, because we can't have the society in which they lived. The people will not obey: the parasites will not be as obsequious as formerly: children do not go down on their knees to beg their parents' blessing: chaplains do not say grace and retire before the pudding: servants do not say "your honor" and "your worship" at every moment: tradesmen do not stand hat in hand as the gentleman passes: authors do not wait for hours in gentlemen's anterooms with a fulsome dedication, for which they hope to get five guineas from his lordship. In the days when there were fine gentlemen, Mr. Secretary Pitt's under-secretaries did not dare to sit down before him; but Mr. Pitt, in his turn, went down on his gouty knees to George II.; and when George III. spoke a few kind words to him, Lord Chatham burst into tears of reverential joy and gratitude; so awful was the idea of the monarch, and so great the distinctions of rank. Fancy Lord John Russell or Lord Palmerston on their knees whilst the Sovereign was reading a despatch, or beginning to cry because Prince Albert said something civil! At the accession of George III., the patricians were yet at the height of their good fortune. Society recognized their superiority, which they themselves pretty calmly took for granted. They inherited not only titles and estates, and seats in the house of Peers, but seats in the House of Commons. There were a multitude of Government places, and not. merely these, but bribes of actual 5001. notes, which members of the House took not much shame in receiving. Fox went into Parliament at 20: Pitt when just of age: his father when not much older. It was the good time | laughter, read of their loves, quarrels, for Patricians. Small blame to them if they took and enjoyed, and overenjoyed, the prizes of politics, the pleasures of social life. intrigues, debts, duels, divorces; can In these letters to Selwyn, we are made acquainted with a whole society of these defunct fine gentlemen: and can watch with a curious interest a life which the novel-writers of that time, I think, have scarce touched upon. To Smollett, to Fielding even, a lord was a lord: a gorgeous being with a blue ribbon, a coroneted chair, and an immense star on his bosom, to whom commoners paid reverence. Richardson, a man of humbler birth than either of the above two, owned that he was ignorant regarding the manners of the aristocracy, and besought Mrs. Donnellan, a lady who had lived in the great world, to examine a volume of Sir Charles Grandison, and point out any errors which she might see in this particular. Mrs. Donnellan found so many faults, that Richardson changed color; shut up the book; and muttered that it were best to throw it in the fire. Here, in Selwyn, we have the real original men and women of fashion of the early time of George III. We can follow them to the new club at Almack's we can travel over Europe with them: we can accompany them not only to the public places, but to their country-houses and private society. Here is a whole company of Selwyn has a chaplain and parathem; wits and prodigals; some per- site, one Dr. Warner, than whom severing in their bad ways: some re- Plautus, or Ben Jonson, or Hogarth, pentant, but relapsing; beautiful la- never painted a better character. In dies, parasites, humble chaplains, led letter after letter he adds fresh strokes captains. Those fair creatures whom to the portrait of himself, and comwe love in Reynolds's portraits, and pletes a portrait not a little curious to who still look out on us from his can- look at now that the man has passed vases with their sweet calm faces and away; all the foul pleasures and gamgracious smiles those fine gentle- bols in which he revelled, played out; men who did us the honor to govern all the rouged faces into which he us; who inherited their boroughs; leered, worms and skulls; all the fine took their ease in their patient places; gentlemen whose shoebuckles he and slipped Lord North's bribes so kissed, laid in their coffins. This elegantly under their ruffles - we worthy clergyman takes care to tell make acquaintance with a hundred of us that he does not believe in his rethese fine folks, hear their talk and|ligion, though, thank heaven, he is not so great a rogue as a lawyer. He goes on Mr. Selwyn's errands, any errands, and is proud, he says, to be that gentleman's proveditor. He waits upon the Duke of Queensberry -old Q.-and exchanges pretty stories with that aristocrat. He comes home "after a hard day's christening," as he says, and writes to his patron before sitting down to whist and partridges for supper. He revels in the thoughts of ox-cheek and burgundy he is a boisterous, uproarious parasite, licks his master's shoes with explosions of laughter and cunning smack and gusto, and likes the taste of that blacking as much as the best claret in old Q.'s cellar. He has Rabelais and Horace at his greasy fingers' ends. He is inexpressibly mean, curiously jolly; kindly and good-natured in secret -a tenderhearted knave, not a venomous lickspittle. Jesse says, that at his chapel in Long Acre," he attained a considerable popularity by the pleasing, manly, and eloquent style of his delivery.' Was infidelity endemic, and corruption in the air? Around a young king, himself of the most exemplary life and undoubted piety, lived a court society as dissolute as our country ever knew. George II.'s bad morals bore their fruit in George III.'s early years; as I believe that a knowledge of that good man's example, his moderation, his frugal simplicity, and God-fearing life, tended infinitely to improve the morals of the country and purify the whole nation. After Warner, the most interesting of Selwyn's correspondents is the Earl of Carlisle, grandfather of the amiable nobleman at present* Viceroy in Ireland. The grandfather, too, was Irish Viceroy, having previously been treasurer of the King's household: and, in 1778, the principal commissioner for treating, consulting, and agreeing upon the means of quieting the divisions subsisting in his Majes * 1856. ty's colonies, plantations, and possessions in North America. You may read his lordship's manifestoes in "The Royal New York Gazette." He returned to England, having by no means quieted the colonies; and speedily afterwards "The Royal New York Gazette " somehow ceased to be published: This good, clever, kind, highly-bred Lord Carlisle was one of the English fine gentlemen who were well-nigh ruined by the awful debauchery and extravagance which prevailed in the great English society of those days. Its dissoluteness was awful: it had swarmed over Europe after the Peace; it had danced, and raced, and gambled in all the courts. It had made its bow at Versailles; it had run its horses on the plain of Sablons, near Paris, and created the Anglo-mania there: it had exported vast quantities of pictures and marbles from Rome and Florence; it had ruined itself by building great galleries and palaces for the reception of the statues and pictures: it had brought over singing-women and dancing-women from all the operas of Europe, on whom my lords lavished their thousands, whilst they left their honest wives and honest children languishing in the lonely, deserted splendors of the castle and park at home. Besides the great London society of those days, there was another unacknowledged world, extravagant beyond measure, tearing about in the pursuit of pleasure; dancing, gambling, drinking, singing; meeting the real society in the public places (at Ranelaghs, Vauxhalls, and Ridottos, about which our old novelists talk so constantly), and outvying the real leaders of fashion in luxury, and splendor, and beauty. For instance, when the famous Miss Gunning visited Paris as Lady Coventry, where she expected that her beauty would meet with the applause which had followed her sister through England, it appears she was put to flight by an English lady still more lovely in the eyes of the Parisians. A certain solute society, at the head of a great Mrs. Pitt took a box at the opera op- fortune. Forced into luxury, and posite the Countess; and was so obliged to be a great lord and a great much handsomer than her ladyship, idler, he yielded to some temptations, that the parterre cried out that this and paid for them a bitter penalty of was the real English angel, where- manly remorse; from some others he upon Lady Coventry quitted Paris in fled wisely, and ended by conquering a huff. The poor thing died present- them nobly. But he always had the ly of consumption, accelerated, it was good wife and children in his mind, said, by the red and white paint with and they saved him. "I am very which she plastered those luckless glad you did not come to me the charms of hers. (We must represent morning I left London," he writes to to ourselves all fashionable female G. Selwyn, as he is embarking for Europe, at that time, as plastered America. "I can only say, I never with white, and raddled with red.) knew till that moment of parting, She left two daughters behind her, what grief was." There is no partwhom George Selwyn loved (he was ing now, where they are. The faithcuriously fond of little children), and ful wife, the kind, generous gentleman, who are described very drolly and have left a noble race behind them: pathetically in these letters, in their an inheritor of his name and titles, little nursery, where passionate little who is beloved as widely as he is Lady Fanny, if she had not good known; a man most kind, accomcards, flung hers into Lady Mary's plished, gentle, friendly, and pure; face; and where they sat conspiring and female descendants occupying how they should receive a new moth-high stations and embellishing great er-in-law whom their papa presently names; some renowned for beauty, brought home. They got on very and all for spotless lives, and pious well with their mother-in-law, who matronly virtues. was very kind to them; and they Another of Selwyn's correspondgrew up, and they were married, and ents is the Earl of March, afterwards they were both divorced afterwards - Duke of Queensberry, whose life lastpoor little souls! Poor painted moth-ed into this century; and who certainer, poor society, ghastly in its pleas-ly as earl or duke, young man or grayures, its loves, its revelries! beard, was not an ornament to any possible society. The legends about old Q. are awful. In Selwyn, in Wraxall, and contemporary chronicles, the observer of human nature may follow him, drinking, gambling, intriguing to the end of his career; when the wrinkled, palsied, toothless old Don Juan died, as wicked and unrepentant as he had been at the hottest season of youth and passion. There is a house in Piccadilly, where they used to show a certain low window at which old Q. sat to his very last days, ogling through his senile glasses the women as they passed by. As for my lord commissioner, we can afford to speak about him; because, though he was a wild and weak commissioner at one time, though he hurt his estate, though he gambled and lost ten thousand pounds at a sitting-"five times more," says the unlucky gentleman, "than I ever lost before; "though he swore he never would touch a card again; and yet, strange to say, went back to the table and lost still more: yet he repented of his errors, sobered down, and became a worthy peer and a good country gentleman, and returned to the good wife and the good There must have been a great deal children whom he had always loved of good about this lazy, sleepy George with the best part of his heart. He Selwyn, which, no doubt, is set to his had married at one and twenty. He present credit. "Your friendship,' found himself, in the midst of a dis-writes Carlisle to him, "is so differ |