at he was already dead. "I must have a suit of
black," he is reported to have said, "in memory of George the Third,
for whom I know there is a general mourning." George the Third was
dead in life, and about him those he loved were dying fast. On
November 6, 1817, the Princess Charlotte died, the only child of the
Prince Regent. She was very popular, was in the direct succession to
the throne; she hoped to be queen, and many shared her hope. The
prisoner of St. Helena believed that in her lay his best chance of
liberation. She married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg on May 2, 1816,
and died after giving birth to a still-born child in the following
year. She was not quite twenty-two years old. The news of her death
greatly affected the old queen, her grandmother. Her health, that had
long been weak, grew weaker, and she died on November 17, 1818. She
had lived her simple, honest, narrow, upright life for seventy-four
years. On May 24, 1819, a daughter was born to the Duchess of Kent,
the wife of Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George the Third.
On January 23, 1820, the Duke of Kent died. Six days later the King
ceased to exist. He was in the eighty-second year of his age and the
sixtieth year of his reign. The most devoted loyalist could not have
wished for the unhappy King another hour of life. "Vex not his ghost
O! Let {349} him pass; he hates him that would upon the rack of this
rough world stretch him out longer."

[Sidenote: 1760-1820--Progress under George the Third]

The reign that had ended was certainly the longest and perhaps the most
remarkable then known to English history. The King's granddaughter,
the Princess Victoria, born so short a time before his death, was
destined to a reign at once longer and more remarkable than the reign
of George the Third. The England of 1820 was not nearly so far removed
from the England of 1760 as the England of the last year of the
nineteenth century was removed from 1837. But the changes that took
place in England in the sixty years of the reign of the third George
were changes of vast moment and vast importance. If England's
political fortunes fell and rose in startling contrast, the progress of
civilization was steady and significant. The social England of 1820
was widely different from the social England of 1760. The advance of
population, the growth of great towns, the increase of means of
intercourse between one part of the country and anothe