to whom our friend was
admitted, said he could not be introduced to the master, however pressing
the business might be. The master was asleep after his dinner; he always
slept after his dinner: and woe be to the person who interrupted him!
Nevertheless, our stout friend of the jackboots put the affrighted ladies
aside, opened the forbidden door of the bedroom, wherein upon the bed lay
a little gentleman; and here the eager messenger knelt down in his
jackboots.

He on the bed started up, and with many oaths and a strong German accent
asked who was there, and who dared to disturb him?

"I am Sir Robert Walpole," said the messenger. The awakened sleeper hated
Sir Robert Walpole. "I have the honour to announce to your Majesty that
your royal father, King George I, died at Osnaburg, on Saturday last, the
10th inst."

"_Dat is one big lie!_" roared out his sacred Majesty King George II: but
Sir Robert Walpole stated the fact, and from that day until
three-and-thirty years after, George, the second of the name, ruled over
England.

How the king made away with his father's will under the astonished nose of
the Archbishop of Canterbury; how he was a choleric little sovereign; how
he shook his fist in the face of his father's courtiers; how he kicked his
coat and wig about in his rages, and called everybody thief, liar, rascal,
with whom he differed: you will read in all the history books; and how he
speedily and shrewdly reconciled himself with the bold minister, whom he
had hated during his father's life, and by whom he was served during
fifteen years of his own with admirable prudence, fidelity, and success.
But for Sir Robert Walpole, we should have had the Pretender back again.
But for his obstinate love of peace, we should have had wars, which the
nation was not strong enough nor united enough to endure. But for his
resolute counsels and good-humoured resistance we might have had German
despots attempting a Hanoverian regimen over us: we should have had
revolt, commotion, want, and tyrannous misrule, in place of a quarter of a
century of peace, freedom, and material prosperity, such as the country
never enjoyed, until that corrupter of Parliaments, that dissolute tipsy
cynic, that courageous lover of peace and liberty, that great citizen,
patriot, and statesman governed it. In religion he was little better than
a heathen; cracked ribald jokes at bigwigs and bishops, and laughed at
High Church and Low. In private life