requent Garrick's theatre, and had "the liberty of the
scenes", he says, "all the actresses knew me, and dropped me a curtsy as
they passed to the stage." That would make a pretty picture: it is a
pretty picture in my mind, of youth, folly, gaiety, tenderly surveyed by
wisdom's merciful, pure eyes.

George III and his queen lived in a very unpretending but elegant-looking
house, on the site of the hideous pile under which his granddaughter at
present reposes. The king's mother inhabited Carlton House, which
contemporary prints represent with a perfect paradise of a garden, with
trim lawns, green arcades, and vistas of classic statues. She admired
these in company with my Lord Bute, who had a fine classic taste, and
sometimes counsel took and sometimes tea in the pleasant green arbours
along with that polite nobleman. Bute was hated with a rage of which there
have been few examples in English history. He was the butt for everybody's
abuse; for Wilkes's devilish mischief; for Churchill's slashing satire;
for the hooting of the mob that roasted the boot, his emblem, in a
thousand bonfires; that hated him because he was a favourite and a
Scotchman, calling him "Mortimer", "Lothario", I know not what names, and
accusing his royal mistress of all sorts of crimes--the grave, lean,
demure, elderly woman, who, I dare say, was quite as good as her
neighbours. Chatham lent the aid of his great malice to influence the
popular sentiment against her. He assailed, in the House of Lords, "the
secret influence, more mighty than the Throne itself, which betrayed and
clogged every administration." The most furious pamphlets echoed the cry.
"Impeach the king's mother," was scribbled over every wall at the Court
end of the town, Walpole tells us. What had she done? What had Frederick,
Prince of Wales, George's father, done, that he was so loathed by George
II and never mentioned by George III? Let us not seek for stones to batter
that forgotten grave, but acquiesce in the contemporary epitaph over him:--

Here lies Fred,
Who was alive, and is dead.
Had it been his father,
I had much rather.
Had it been his brother,
Still better than another.
Had it been his sister,
No one would have missed her.
Had it been the whole generation,
Still better for the nation.
But since 'tis only Fred,
Who was alive, and is dead,
There's no more to be said.

The widow with eight children round her,