implies the want of those qualities which constitute manly virtue, without the possession of the charms by which female weaknesses are redeemed; independently of the fact that those weaker parts are less prejudicial in the woman, because they are more in harmony with the whole. That they who draw the breath of life in a Court, and pass all their days in an atmosphere of lies, should have any very sacred regard for truth, is hardly to be expected. They experience such falsehood in all who surround them, that deception, at least suppression of the truth, almost seems necessary for self-defence; and accordingly, if their speech be not framed upon the theory of the French Cardinal, that language was given to man for the better concealment of his thoughts, they at least seem to regard in what they say, not its resemblance to the fact in question, but rather its subserviency to the purpose in view.

The course of private conduct which one in such a station, of such habits, and of such a disposition, might naturally be expected to run, was that of the Prince from his early youth upwards; and when he entered upon public life, he was found to have exhausted the resources of a career of pleasure; to have gained followers without making friends; to have acquired much envy and some admiration among the unthinking multitude of polished society; but not, in any quarter, either to command respect or conciliate esteem. line of political conduct which he should pursue was chalked out by the relative position in which he stood to his father, and still more by that monarch's character, in almost all respects the reverse of his own.

The

It thus happened that the Whig party, being the enemies of George III., found favour in the sight of his son, and became his natural allies. In the scramble for power they highly valued such an auxiliary, and many of them were received also into the personal favour of their illustrious political recruit. But state affairs were by him only taken as a stimulant, to rouse

the dormant appetite, when more vulgar excitement had fatigued the jaded sense; and it would be extremely difficult to name the single occasion on which any part was taken by him whom the Whigs held out as the most exalted member of their body, from the end of the American war until the beginning of the contest with France. An event then occurred which brought his Royal Highness upon the stage, but not as a friend of the Liberal party. He came forward to disclaim them, to avow that his sentiments differed widely from theirs, and to declare that upon the great question which divided the world, he took part with the enemies of liberty and of improvement. The French Revolution had alarmed him, in common with most of his order; he quitted the party for many years; he gave the only support he had to give, his vote, to their adversaries. The rest of his political history is soon told. When the alarm had subsided he gradually came back to the Opposition party, and acted with them until his father's illness called him to the Regency, when he shamefully abandoned them, flung himself into the hands of their antagonists, and continued to the end of his days their enemy, with a relentless bitterness, a rancorous malignity, which betokened the spite of his nature, and his consciousness of having injured and betrayed those whom, therefore, he never could forgive. It was indeed the singular and unenviable fate of this Prince, that he who at various times had more troops of friends" to surround him than any man of any age, changed them so often, and treated them so ill, as to survive, during a short part of his life, every one of his attachments, and to find himself before its close in the hands of his enemies, or of mere strangers, the accidental connexions of yesterday.

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After running the course of dissipation, uninterrupted by any more rational or worthy pursuit,— prematurely exhausting the resources of indulgence, both animal and mental, and become incapable of

receiving further gratification unless the wish of the
ancient tyrant could be gratified by the invention of
some new pleasure, it was found that a life of what
was called unbounded profusion could not be passed
without unlimited extravagance, and that such enor-
mous sums had been squandered in a few years as
seemed to baffle conjecture how the money could have
been spent.
The bill was of course brought in to the
country, and one of the items which swelled the total
amount to above half a million, was many hundreds
of pounds for Marechal powder, a perfumed brown
dust with which the fops of those days filled their hair,
in preference to using soap and water, after the manner
of the less courtly times that succeeded the French
Revolution. The discontent which this unprincipled
and senseless waste of money occasioned had no effect
in mending the life of its author; and in a few years
a new debt had been incurred, and the aid of Parlia-
ment was required again. There seemed now no
chance but one of extricating the Prince from the
difficulties with which he had surrounded himself, and
obtaining such an increased income as might enable
him to continue his extravagance without contracting
new debts. That chance was his consenting to marry;
in order that the event might take place, so pleasing to
a people whom all the vices and the follies of royalty
can never wean from their love of Princes, and the
increase of the royal family be effected with due regu-
larity of procedure from the heir-apparent's loins.
But, although the entering into the state of matrimony
in regular form, and with the accustomed publicity,
might afford the desired facilities of a pecuniary kind,
such a step little suited the taste of the illustrious per-
sonage usually termed "the hope of the country."
That the restraints of wedlock should be dreaded by
one to whom all restraint had hitherto been a stranger,
and who could set at nought whatever obligations of
constancy that holy and comfortable state imposed, was

wholly out of the question. If that were all, he could have no kind of objection to take as many wives as the law of the land allowed, supposing the dower of each to be a bill upon the patient good-nature of the English people, towards discharging some mass of debt contracted. But there had happened another event, not quite suited to the people's taste, although of a matrimonial kind, which had been most carefully concealed for very sufficient reasons, and which placed him in a predicament more embarrassing than even his pecuniary difficulties.

The most excusable by far, indeed the most respectable of all the Prince's attachments, had been that which he had early formed for Mrs. Fitzherbert, a woman of the most amiable qualities, and the most exemplary virtue. Her abilities were not shining, nor were her personal charms dazzling, nor was she even in the first stage of youth; but her talents were of the most engaging kind: she had a peculiarly sweet disposition, united to sterling good sense, and was possessed of manners singularly fascinating. His passion for this excellent person was a redeeming virtue of the Prince; it could only proceed from a fund of natural sense and good taste, which, had it but been managed with ordinary prudence and care, would have endowed a most distinguished character in private life; and, could it by any miracle have been well managed in a palace, must have furnished out a ruler before whose lustre the fame of Titus and the Antonines would grow pale. This passion was heightened by the difficulties which its virtuous object interposed to its gratification; and upon no other terms than marriage could that be obtained. But marriage with this admirable lady was forbidden by law! She was a Roman Catholic; sincerely attached to the religion of her forefathers, she refused to purchase a crown by conforming to any other; and the law declared, that whoever married a Catholic should forfeit all right to the crown of these realms, as if he

were naturally dead. This law, however, was unknown to her, and, blinded by various pretences, she was induced to consent to a clandestine marriage, which is by many supposed to have been solemnized between her and the Prince beyond the limits of the English dominions, in the silly belief, perhaps, entertained by him, that he escaped the penalty to which his reckless conduct exposed him, and that the forfeiture of his succession to the crown was only denounced against such a marriage if contracted within the realm. The consent of the Sovereign was another requisite of the law to render the marriage valid: that consent had not been obtained; and the invalidity of the contract was supposed to save the forfeiture. But they who so construed the plain provision in the Bill of Rights, assumed first, that no forfeiture could be incurred by doing an act which was void in itself, whereas the law of England, as well as of Scotland, and every other country,† abounds in cases of acts prohibited and made void, yet punished by a forfeiture of the rights of him who contravenes the prohibition, as much as if they were valid and effectual. The same courtly reasoners and fraudulent matchmakers of Carlton House next assumed that statutes so solemn as the Bill of Rights and Act of Settlement could be varied, and, indeed, repealed in an essential particular, most clearly within their mischief, by a subsequent law which makes not the least reference whatever to their provisions; while no man could doubt that to prevent even the attempt at contravening those prohibitions was the object of

Some affirm, and I believe correctly, that it was performed in London at the house of her uncle.

To lawyers this matter is quite familiar. In England, if a tenant for life makes a feoffment in fee, this forfeits his life estate, although the attempt to enlarge his estate is altogether ineffectual, and the feoffee takes nothing by the grant. In Scotland, if an heir of entail, fettered by the fencing clauses, makes a conveyance contrary to the prohibitions, the deed is wholly void, and yet he forfeits the estate, to use the words of the Bill of Rights, "as if he were naturally dead.”