of the contemporaries of George
the Second, but they were firmly believed in and strongly asserted by
others, who seem to have had authority for their belief. At all
events, they fit in better with the character and surroundings of both
princes than the tragic story of the letter and its fearful summons,
the warning of the fortune-teller, or the soul of the dead King
revisiting the earth in the funereal form of a raven.

There is not much that is good to be said of George the First. He had
a certain prosaic honesty, and was frugal amid all his vulgar
voluptuousness. He managed the expenses of his court with creditable
economy and regularity. The officers in his army, and his civil
servants, received their pay at the properly-appointed time. It would
be hardly worth while recording these particulars to the King's credit,
but that it was somewhat of a novelty in the arrangements of a modern
court for men to receive the reward of their services at regular
intervals and in the proper amount. George occasionally did a liberal
thing, and he more than once professed a strong interest in the
improvement of university education. He is said to have declared to a
German nobleman, who was complimenting him on the possession of two
such kingdoms as England and Hanover, that a king ought to be
congratulated rather on having two such subjects as Newton in the one
country and Leibnitz in the other. We fear, however, that this story
must go with the fortune-teller and the raven; one cannot think of dull
prosaic {270} George uttering such a monumental sort of sentiment. He
cared nothing for literature or science or art. He seems to have had
no genuine friendships. He hated his son, and he used to speak of his
daughter-in-law, Caroline, as "that she-devil the princess." [Sidenote:
1727--His epitaph] Whatever was respectable in his character came out
best at times of trial. He was not a man whom danger could make
afraid. At the most critical moments--as, for instance, at the
outbreak of the rebellion in 1715--he never lost his head. If he was
not capable of seeing far, he saw clearly, and he could look coming
events steadily in the face. On one or two occasions, when an
important choice had to be made between this political course and that,
he chose quickly and well. The fact that he thoroughly appreciated the
wisdom and the political integrity, of Walpole speaks, perhaps, his
highest praise. His reign, on the whole, was