rd or whisker, but fringed with the curls
of a large brown wig. That is all I remember, or care to remember, of
George the Fourth.

A little more than ten years after that cold January day of which I
wrote, this King lay, dying, at Windsor. It was early summer, and I,
a boy of fifteen, was one of a group of people who stood in front of a
bookseller's shop at Guildford, reading a copy of a bulletin which had
just arrived: "_His Majesty has passed a restless night; the symptoms
have not abated_." As I turned away, I overheard a woman say, "The
King'll be sure to die; he's got the symptoms, and I never knew
anybody get over _that_." All at once the bells struck up a merry
peal, and the Union Jack floated from the "Upper Church" tower. A
crowd assembled round the "White Hart," and a dozen post-horses, ready
harnessed, stood waiting in the street. Presently there was a sound of
hoofs and wheels, and three carriages dashed rapidly up the hill, to
the front of the hotel. The people waved their hats and shouted. The
glass window of one of the carriages was let down, and a child's
face and uncovered head appeared in the opening: it was the Princess
Victoria, then eleven years old. A mass of golden curls; a fair round
face, with the full apple-shaped cheeks peculiar to the Guelphs; a
pair of bright blue eyes; an upper lip too short to cover the front
teeth; a pleasant smile; and a graceful bending of the tiny figure as
the carriage passed away, left favourable impressions of the future
Queen. She had been summoned from the Isle of Wight to be near her
uncle; at whose death, a few days after--amid a storm of thunder and
lightning, such as had not been known since the night when Cromwell
died--his brother, the Duke of Clarence, was proclaimed King, and she
became the Heiress Presumptive to the Crown of England.

William the Fourth, with his good Queen, Adelaide, I saw once, as
they rode in the great State carriage to the Handel commemoration,
at Westminster Abbey, in June, 1834. The King had a good-tempered,
simple-looking face, without much sign of intellectual power;
the Queen's face was of Grecian shape, and had a thoughtful and
intelligent expression. The face and features were good in form, but
the complexion was highly coloured, and looked as though affected
by some kind of inflammation. They were a quiet, unpretending,
well-meaning, and moral couple. They purified the tainted precincts of
the Court, and thus rendered it fi