ng's birthday not one of the Ministers was invited to the Castle,
and none except the Household in any way connected with the
Government. At the Queen's birthday a short time before not one
individual of that party was present. Nothing can be more
undisguised than the King's aversion to his Ministers, and he seems
resolved to intimate that his compulsory reception of them shall not
extend to his society, and that though he can't help seeing them at
St. James's, the gates of Windsor are shut against them. All his
habitual guests are of the Tory party, and generally those who have
distinguished themselves by their violence or are noted for their
extreme opinions--Winchilsea and Wharncliffe, for example, of the
former, and the Duke of Dorset of the latter sort. At the dinner on
his birthday the King gave the Princess Victoria's health rather
well. Having given the Princess Augusta's he said, 'And now, having
given the health of the oldest, I will give that of the youngest
member of the Royal Family. I know the interest which the public
feel about her, and although _I have not seen so much of her as I
could have wished_, I take no less interest in her, and the more I
do see of her, both in public and in private, the greater pleasure
it will give me.' The whole thing was so civil and gracious that it
could hardly be taken ill, but the young Princess sat opposite, and
hung her head with not unnatural modesty at being thus talked of in
so large a company.

[6] [Lady Augusta Fitzclarence, fourth daughter of King
William IV. by Mrs. Jordan, married first, on the 5th
of July, 1827 to the Hon. John Kennedy Erskine, and
secondly, on the 26th of August, 1836, to Lord John
Frederick Gordon. She died in 1865.]

While London is entirely deserted, and everything is quiet and
prosperous here, there is a storm raging in Spain which has
already had an effect in France, by producing the dissolution of
Thiers's Ministry,[7] and may very likely end by creating
disturbances in that country and embroiling Europe. The
complication of French politics, the character and designs of the
King, his relations with the great Powers of Europe, and the
personal danger to which he is exposed from the effects of a
demoralised mass of floating hostility and disaffection, rendered
doubly perilous from the mixture of unnatural excitement and
contempt of life which largely enter into it, present a very
curious a