s of Wales, and chuckled
over the proof-sheets of that mysterious 'book' by the publication of
which the injured wife and the lawyer hoped to take vengeance on their
common enemy. There the Chancellor, feeling it well to protract his
flirtation with the Princess of Wales, entertained her in the June of
1808, with a grand banquet, from which Lady Eldon was compelled by
indisposition to be absent. And there, four years later, when he was
satisfied that her Royal Highness's good opinion could be of no service
to him, the crafty, self-seeking minister gave a still more splendid
dinner to the husband whose vices he had professed to abhor, whose
meanness of spirit he had declared the object of his contempt.
"However," writes Lord Campbell, with much satiric humor, describing
this alliance between the selfish voluptuary and the equally selfish
lawyer, "he was much comforted by having the honor, at the prorogation,
of entertaining at dinner his Royal Highness the Regent, with whom he
was now a special favorite, and who, enjoying the splendid hospitality
of Bedford Square, forgot that the Princess of Wales had sat in the same
room; at the same table; on the same chair; had drunk of the same wine;
out of the same cup; while the conversation had turned on her barbarous
usage, and the best means of publishing to the world _her_ wrongs and
_his_ misconduct."

Another of the Prince Regent's visits to Bedford Square is surrounded
with comic circumstances and associations. In the April of 1815, a
mastership of chancery became vacant by the death of Mr. Morris; and
forthwith the Chancellor was assailed with entreaties from every
direction for the vacant post. For two months Eldon, pursuing that
policy of which he was a consummate master, delayed to appoint; but
on June 23, he disgusted the bar and shocked the more intelligent
section of London society, by conferring the post on Jekyll, the
courtly _bon vivant_ and witty descendant of Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master
of the Rolls. Amiable, popular, and brilliant, Jekyll received the
congratulations of his numerous personal friends; but beyond the
circle of his private acquaintance the appointment created lively
dissatisfaction--dissatisfaction which was heightened rather than
diminished by the knowledge that the placeman's good fortune was
entirely due to the personal importunity of the Prince Regent, who
called at the Chancellor's house, and having forced his way into the
bedroom, to which El