rinces who ruled reluctantly
enough over the fortunes of England. This same dispassionate observer
might reasonably, assuming him to possess familiar knowledge of certain
facts, have hazarded the prediction that George the Third would be a
better king than his grandfather and his great-grandfather. He was
certainly a better man. There was so much of a basis whereupon to
build a hope of better things. The profligacy of his ancestors had not
apparently vitiated his blood and judgment. His young life had been a
pure life. He was in that way a pattern to princes. He had been,
which was rare with his race, a good son. He was to be--and there was
no more rare quality in one of his stock--a good husband, a good
father. He was in his way a good friend to his friends. He was
sincerely desirous to prove himself a good king to his people.

The youth of George the Third had passed under somewhat agitated
conditions. George the Second's straight-forward hatred for his son's
wife opened a great gulf between the Court and Leicester House, which
no true courtier made any effort to bridge. While the young Prince
knew, in consequence, little or nothing of the atmosphere of St.
James's or the temper of those who breathed that atmosphere, attempts
were not wanting to sunder him from the influence of his mother. Some
of the noblemen and clergymen to whom the early instruction of the
young {6} Prince was entrusted labored with a persistency which would
have been admirable in some other cause to sever him not merely from
all his father's friends but even from his father's wife. There was
indeed a time when their efforts almost succeeded in alienating the
young Prince from his mother. The wildest charges of Jacobitism were
brought against the immediate servants of the Princess, charges which
those who made them wholly failed to substantiate. The endeavor to
remove the Prince from the tutelage of his mother was abandoned. The
education of the Prince was committed to more sympathetic care. The
change had its advantage in keeping George in the wholesome atmosphere
of Leicester House instead of exposing him to the temptations of a
profligate Court. It had its disadvantages in leaving him entirely
under the influence of a man to whose guidance, counsel, and authority
the Princess Dowager absolutely submitted herself.

[Sidenote: 1760--Lord Bute]

Observers of the lighter sort are pleased to insist upon the trifles
which have t