outs were assembled. "What! is this Gloucester New Bridge?"
asked our gracious monarch; and the people answered him, "Yes, your
Majesty." "Why, then, my boys," said he, "let us have a huzzay!" After
giving them which intellectual gratification, he went home to breakfast.
Our fathers read these simple tales with fond pleasure; laughed at these
very small jokes; liked the old man who poked his nose into every cottage;
who lived on plain wholesome roast and boiled; who despised your French
kickshaws; who was a true hearty old English gentleman. You may have seen
Gilray's famous print of him--in the old wig, in the stout old hideous
Windsor uniform--as the King of Brobdingnag, peering at a little Gulliver,
whom he holds up in his hand, whilst in the other he has an opera-glass,
through which he surveys the pygmy? Our fathers chose to set up George as
the type of a great king; and the little Gulliver was the great Napoleon.
We prided ourselves on our prejudices; we blustered and bragged with
absurd vainglory; we dealt to our enemy a monstrous injustice of contempt
and scorn; we fought him with all weapons, mean as well as heroic. There
was no lie we would not believe; no charge of crime which our furious
prejudice would not credit. I thought at one time of making a collection
of the lies which the French had written against us, and we had published
against them during the war: it would be a strange memorial of popular
falsehood.

Their majesties were very sociable potentates: and the Court Chronicler
tells of numerous visits which they paid to their subjects, gentle and
simple: with whom they dined; at whose great country-houses they stopped;
or at whose poorer lodgings they affably partook of tea and
bread-and-butter. Some of the great folks spent enormous sums in
entertaining their sovereigns. As marks of special favour, the king and
queen sometimes stood as sponsors for the children of the nobility. We
find Lady Salisbury was so honoured in the year 1786; and in the year
1802, Lady Chesterfield. The _Court News_ relates how her ladyship
received their Majesties on a state bed "dressed with white satin and a
profusion of lace: the counterpane of white satin embroidered with gold,
and the bed of crimson satin lined with white". The child was first
brought by the nurse to the Marchioness of Bath, who presided as chief
nurse. Then the marchioness handed baby to the queen. Then the queen
handed the little darling to the Bishop