lying dead on the floor. They went and fetched Walmoden; but Walmoden
could not wake him. The sacred Majesty was but a lifeless corpse. The king
was dead; God save the king! But, of course, poets and clergymen
decorously bewailed the late one. Here are some artless verses, in which
an English divine deplored the famous departed hero, and over which you
may cry or you may laugh, exactly as your humour suits:--

While at his feet expiring Faction lay,
No contest left but who should best obey;
Saw in his offspring all himself renewed;
The same fair path of glory still pursued;
Saw to young George Augusta's care impart
Whate'er could raise and humanize the heart;
Blend all his grandsire's virtues with his own,
And form their mingled radiance for the throne--
No farther blessing could on earth be given--
The next degree of happiness was--heaven!

If he had been good, if he had been just, if he had been pure in life, and
wise in council, could the poet have said much more? It was a parson who
came and wept over this grave, with Walmoden sitting on it, and claimed
heaven for the poor old man slumbering below. Here was one who had neither
dignity, learning, morals, nor wit--who tainted a great society by a bad
example; who in youth, manhood, old age, was gross, low, and sensual; and
Mr. Porteus, afterwards my Lord Bishop Porteus, says the earth was not
good enough for him, and that his only place was heaven! Bravo, Mr.
Porteus! The divine who wept these tears over George II's memory wore
George III's lawn. I don't know whether people still admire his poetry or
his sermons.

George The Third

We have to glance over sixty years in as many minutes. To read the mere
catalogue of characters who figured during that long period, would occupy
our allotted time, and we should have all text and no sermon. England has
to undergo the revolt of the American colonies; to submit to defeat and
separation; to shake under the volcano of the French Revolution; to
grapple and fight for the life with her gigantic enemy Napoleon; to gasp
and rally after that tremendous struggle. The old society, with its
courtly splendours, has to pass away; generations of statesmen to rise and
disappear; Pitt to follow Chatham to the tomb; the memory of Rodney and
Wolfe to be superseded by Nelson's and Wellington's glory; the old poets
who unite us to Queen Anne's time to sink into their graves; Johnson to
d