choice, and as the choice was governed by consummate prudence, a marriage of uniform and long-continued felicity was the result, in which the nation may be said to have enjoyed almost an equal share with the parties themselves.

The particularities of domestic life seldom fall properly within the province of the historian; their dimensions are too contracted to suit the proportions of his scale: in the case, however, of the young King and Queen of Great Britain, the rare spectacle of conjugal felicity, fidelity, and virtue in a station so exalted and so exposed, maintained with uniform constancy through half a century, creating an ascendancy which legal authority can never alone confer, and stamping those habits on the nation which have carried it triumphant through a contest in which not safety merely, but the very principle of safety, and the very basis of independent existence have been at stake, claim from the historian the same distinction which any of the greatest events are entitled to, by which the fortunes of states are determined. The King was young and personable, the Queen younger and no less amiable; they were alike moral, and the morality of each was grounded on the same religious principle; turning aside from the fascinations that surrounded them, they held on their steady course amidst obloquy and detraction to the accomplishment of that great destiny, of which they acknowledged the call at the first start of their resolute career. However ordinary or homely all this may appear to some, it will be duly appreciated by such as know the influence of royal example, and who, looking back on the lives of the most popular and patriot princes of modern Europe, are sensible how rarely the turtle of domestic peace and union builds her nest under the roofs of palacesy gofton seora

The young King in his inaugural speech to his parliament boasted his birth as a native Briton; and in that boast included the pledge of a solemn undertaking to his country, to which his coronation oath might add solemnity, but could add no strength, and which his whole life was spent in redeeming. He was a thorough Protestant at heart, and as much attached to the civil and religious liberty of his country as any of his subjects, with a clearer understanding than most, of its real essence and légitimate extent. He wasqa gentleman after the best English pattern, brave and kind, well bred and natural, tenacious of forms, but in essentials the same to all, a cheerful friend, a gentle master, perfect in every domestic relation, chaste, temperate, pious. Such confessedly was this man and prince at the age of twenty-one, surrounded by bad examples and bad precedents, in the heyday of the blood, and in the centre of temptation. To gratify his people, he shewed himself

much in public, and displayed all the splendid exterior of a magnificent throne, but his delight was in the genuine enjoyment of a happy home, and that caressing scene of reciprocal tenderness, of which he was the spring and the model. Rising with the lark, and with the lark at his matins, his first look was upward to his God; the next objects of his thoughts were the duties of his government; himself and his humble pleasures came last; but the constant light that shone from the recesses of his privacy, shed, like the moon from behind a cloud, a placid lustre upon the world beneath. We have never heard of a single instance in the long reign of this admirable prince, and we have been inquisitive on the subject, of his having given way to feelings or expressions of unbecoming temper, unless perhaps during some physical disturbance of his frame when under the influence of his mental distemper; and even in that dark slumber of his faculties, the shadows of the past with a soft and soothing interest still faintly refreshed the fevered brain, and spread a visionary comfort around the heart.,

Such was the man to whom the Princess of Mecklenburg was given in marriage, and towards such a man it was no effort for such a woman to preserve an uniform respect and love. We speak it again from sincere conviction, the nation was peculiarly edified by the virtues of common life exhibited upon the throne, and by seeing an honest man, in all the breadth and compass of that character, and in the sense in which he may be truly called " the noblest work of God," swaying the sceptre of this great empire in conjunction with a woman of that class of females, who abstain from intermeddling with what belongs not to their sex or situation, but who fully accomplish the round of those duties which are so essential to woman's glory, that the exaltation of her rank tends only the more to illustrate their obligation.

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When one reflects upon the versatile conduct of the people of Great Britain towards this royal couple, by whose example they were thus reproved and edified, one feels but little plea sure in contemplating with Dr. Watkins "the sentiment of joy which the royal marriage lighted up in every part of the na tion." One hears with little emotion that "the remotest villages manifested a similar spirit to that which prevailed in the metropolis of the empire, and that there was hardly a cottage in the land that did not share in the common festivity," that "it seemed as if every family and individual regarded the event as connected with their private happiness." The coronation, and the festivities accompanying it were scarcely over, before the return, of that feeling begun to manifest itself, which makes every man of sense sicken when he hears of the permanency of thrones de

pending upon popular affection. In a free country it must depend upon the conviction and satisfaction of the reasoning part of the people,-a conviction that, in the main, under the powers that exist, their rights are best secured. The whole of Mr. Pitt's administration had no other popularity than this. This upstayed the throne of George the Third. The popularity of affection was never his until he ceased to be capable of doing good by administering the government, and nothing remained to him but the memory of his virtuous efficiency. In the next chapter to that which the author has inflated with all that he could collect of the fume and flatulence of popular adulation, the King and Queen sink naturally to the level to which their real dignity consigned them. Their popularity gave place to that involuntary respect which feels and acts, but is neither visible nor vociferous.

It promised to be a reign of dissipation. Their Majesties were young, affable, and cheerful. A general opinion prevailed, that a contrast was about to be displayed to the gloom which had characterized the English court for the twenty preceding years. It was, in truth, an altered scene. There was a liveliness in the manners of both King and Queen which diffused itself around, and lighted up the atmosphere of the court. Lord Orford, in one of his lately-published letters observes, (we quote from these wicked letters with reluctance) The King himself seems all good nature, and wishing to satisfy every body: all his speeches are obliging. I saw him again yesterday, and was surprised to find that the levee-room had lost so entirely the air of the lion's den. The sovereign does not stand in one spot, with his eyes fixed royally on the ground, and dropping bits of German news; he walks about, and speaks to every body. I saw him afterwards on the throne, where he is graceful and genteel, sits with dignity, and reads his answers to addresses well."-" So fickle," says Dr. Watkins, “is public opinion, that not many months after the arrival of the Queen, the palace purchased for her accommodation was nicknamed Holyrood House, and murmurings were heard against the poverty and pride of German connexions." The truth is, that, with the termination of the first festivities of the incipient reign, and the adoption of that eminently regular and virtuous life, which was persevered in by this unsophisticated, temperate, and single-hearted couple to the end of their lives, their popularity in the wide sense of the term died away. The King and Queen lived above it. The tumultuous and vain world lay below them immersed in the smoke and dust of never-ending agitation. The first act of his reign was to give repose to his people after a long and fruitless continental war, carried on to

serve the ambition of a heartless infidel, falsely called a hero, and yet the first act of his reign was unpopular. One of the wickedest men, and the author of the wickedest publication that the world has seen, grossly and atrociously libelled the young monarch, and this foul act was extremely popular. The very gist of Wilkes's popularity was first the contrast of his character to that of the prince upon the throne, and next his abuse of that prince. Junius was popular less by the keenness of his general satire than by the dark and acrimonious slander of his sovereign. His wish avowedly was that Wilkes might for ever be a thorn in his Majesty's side; and yet his book, full of trick in its style and falsehood in its assertions, was the favourite of the people, for their blameless sovereign was its victim. Such is the testimony and the worth of popular favour in its large and general acceptation.

We hear a great deal at present of the virtues of our late excellent sovereign.-A great deal of despicable whining upon the subject, and from those principally who dealt out the hardest measure to him while he lived and reigned. After calumniating and harassing him while alive, they make use of his dead virtues only to place them in an invidious contrast with the character of his successor. The son was upheld while at the head of an opposition to his parents' government; and so long as he was considered as the patron and espouser of his father's enemies. During the whole period of the monarch's reign we heard nothing of his virtues from what was then called the opposition party; the prince was, of all princes, "the most amiable and accomplished;" and any man of thirty years' standing must have a deplorable memory who does not distinctly remember the eulogies bestowed upon the son at the expense of the father by the men called whigs among our politicians. The father dies, the son succeeds, and adopts the spirit of his father's government-the son instantly loses his popularity-the disturbers of the father's quiet, and the calumniators of his administration, make use of the father's memory only to disquiet and disparage the son. There being no issue of the reigning prince to excite to the breach of duty towards his parent, the defunct excellencies of the deceased monarch are re-animated by those who denied them while living, to serve as the instruments of the vengeance of a disappointed faction. We state these odious facts without any colouring; and we defy the world to arraign their truth. As the constant and genuine friends of the late sovereign, whose pages have so often reflected his character, we desire to renounce all sympathy with these hollow professors of regard to his memory. The highest refinement of iniquity is to make virtue itself the agent of ma

levolence. If Junius were now living, we should find him join→ ing loudly in this chorus of canting eulogy, celebrating the apotheosis of the man whose happiness, while living, he vainly laboured to destroy, and borrowing the mantle of the father to hide the dagger prepared against the son. We feel ourselves bound by the highest sanctions to speak reverently of our lawful rulers; and we deem it indecorous to allude to the conduct of our sovereign before his accession to the throne; but for the sake of putting fairly and forcibly an important truth, it may not be unbecoming to say, that if any irregularities are to be charged upon the son of George the Third, when Prince of Wales, they are to be assigned to that period when, with the whig party, his name was highest, when his moral character was conformed to their standard, and was the result of their lessons and example. In an inverse ratio to the elevation of the royal character has been its credit with these ancient friends.

The treatment of the late Queen comprises a still more discreditable specimen of the rotten stuff of which popularity is composed. Aloof from all political controversy, she was only visible in acts of grace and charity. She had no favourites in the empire but her husband and her family, and those of humbler life who stood in the nearest relation to her by their duties and services. The moral atmosphere was pure around her from pollution, or the suspicion of pollution. The English law invested her with great privileges, and placed her fortune under her independent controul,-but the operations in which this sui juris competency was alone observable were protection and bounty. Her conduct was too circumspect to afford even a colour to calumny. She was without blemish; but still she was guilty of being a Queen, and a pious Queen too: add to this, that her charities flowed in secret: in the point, therefore, in which she was chiefly meritorious, she gave to envy its greatest advantage. The damning secret of Junius died with him, but the death of the Queen unsealed the lips of gratitude; her empty coffers half divulged the tale, and the disclosure of the secret which had, till then, been known only to him that rewardeth openly, anticipating no part of her heavenly recompence, showed to the world its cruel injustice when the period of reparation was past.

We have often thought that the closing year of this great lady's life was full of the most melancholy interest. Her frame was sinking under disease, her royal husband blind, decrepid, and deranged, was soon to be deprived of all that remained to him-the watchful solicitude of his faithful friend, long the partner of his cares and his joys, and long, too long, the nurse