th, Chatham, Newcastle; of the fair maids of honour of
George II's Court; of the German retainers of George I's; where Addison
was secretary of state; where Dick Steele held a place; whither the great
Marlborough came with his fiery spouse; when Pope, and Swift, and
Bolingbroke yet lived and wrote. Of a society so vast, busy, brilliant, it
is impossible in four brief chapters to give a complete notion; but we may
peep here and there into that bygone world of the Georges, see what they
and their Courts were like; glance at the people round about them; look at
past manners, fashions, pleasures, and contrast them with our own. I have
to say thus much by way of preface, because the subject of these lectures
has been misunderstood, and I have been taken to task for not having given
grave historical treatises, which it never was my intention to attempt.
Not about battles, about politics, about statesmen and measures of state,
did I ever think to lecture you: but to sketch the manners and life of the
old world; to amuse for a few hours with talk about the old society; and,
with the result of many a day's and night's pleasant reading, to try and
wile away a few winter evenings for my hearers.

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Among the German princes who sat under Luther at Wittenberg, was Duke
Ernest of Celle, whose younger son, William of Lueneburg, was the
progenitor of the illustrious Hanoverian house at present reigning in
Great Britain. Duke William held his Court at Celle, a little town of ten
thousand people that lies on the railway line between Hamburg and Hanover,
in the midst of great plains of sand, upon the river Aller. When Duke
William had it, it was a very humble wood-built place, with a great brick
church, which he sedulously frequented, and in which he and others of his
house lie buried. He was a very religious lord, and called William the
Pious by his small circle of subjects, over whom he ruled till fate
deprived him both of sight and reason. Sometimes, in his latter days, the
good duke had glimpses of mental light, when he would bid his musicians
play the psalm-tunes which he loved. One thinks of a descendant of his,
two hundred years afterwards, blind, old, and lost of wits, singing Handel
in Windsor Tower.

William the Pious had fifteen children, eight daughters and seven sons,
who, as the property left among them was small, drew lots to determine
which one of them should marry, a