in England. "George
the First was always reckoned Vile; still viler George the Second."
These are the lines in which Walter Savage Landor sums up the character
of the first and second George before passing on to picture in little the
characters of the third and fourth of the name. Landor was not wrong
when he described George the Second as, on the whole, rather worse than
George the First. George the Second was born at Hanover on October {274}
30, 1683, and was therefore in his forty-fourth year when he succeeded to
the throne. He had still less natural capacity than his father. He was
parsimonious; he was avaricious; he was easily put out of temper. His
instincts, feelings, passions were all purely selfish. He had hot
hatreds and but cool friendships. Personal courage was, perhaps, the
only quality becoming a sovereign which George the Second possessed. He
had served as a volunteer under Marlborough in 1708, and at the battle of
Oudenarde he had headed a charge of his Hanoverian dragoons with a
bravery worthy of a prince. He is to serve later on at Dettingen, and to
be in all probability the last English sovereign who commanded in person
on the battlefield. His education was not even so good as that of his
father, and he had an utter contempt for literature. He had little
religious feeling, but is said to have had a firm belief in the existence
of vampires. He was fond of business--devoted to the small ways of
routine. He took a great interest in military matters and all that
concerned the arrangements and affairs of an army. Like his father he
found abiding pleasure in the society of a little group of more or less
attractive mistresses.

[Sidenote: 1727--Incredulity of the Prince of Wales]

George the Second had always detested his father, and during the greater
part of their lives was equally detested by him. The reconciliation
which had lately taken place between them was as formal and superficial
as that of the two demons described in Le Sage's story. "They brought us
together," says Asmodeus; "they reconciled us. We shook hands and became
mortal enemies." When the reconciliation between George the Second and
his father was brought about by the influence of Stanhope and of Walpole,
the father and son shook hands and continued to be mortal enemies. If
George the First had his court at St. James's, George the Second had his
court and _coterie_ gathered around him at Leicester Fields and at
Richmo