ndrous eloquence,
fancy, feeling. Tom Moore perched upon it for awhile, and piped his most
exquisite little love-tunes on it, flying away in a twitter of indignation
afterwards, and attacking the prince with bill and claw. In such society,
no wonder the sitting was long, and the butler tired of drawing corks.
Remember what the usages of the time were, and that William Pitt, coming
to the House of Commons after having drunk a bottle of port wine at his
own house, would go into Bellamy's with Dundas, and help finish a couple
more.

You peruse volumes after volumes about our prince, and find some
half-dozen stock stories--indeed not many more--common to all the histories.
He was good-natured; an indolent, voluptuous prince, not unkindly. One
story, the most favourable to him of all, perhaps, is that as Prince
Regent he was eager to hear all that could be said in behalf of prisoners
condemned to death, and anxious, if possible, to remit the capital
sentence. He was kind to his servants. There is a story common to all the
biographies, of Molly the housemaid, who, when his household was to be
broken up, owing to some reforms which he tried absurdly to practise, was
discovered crying as she dusted the chairs because she was to leave a
master who had a kind word for all his servants. Another tale is that of a
groom of the prince's being discovered in corn and oat peculations, and
dismissed by the personage at the head of the stables; the prince had word
of John's disgrace, remonstrated with him very kindly, generously
reinstated him, and bade him promise to sin no more--a promise which John
kept. Another story is very fondly told of the prince as a young man
hearing of an officer's family in distress, and how he straightway
borrowed six or eight hundred pounds, put his long fair hair under his
hat, and so disguised carried the money to the starving family. He sent
money, too, to Sheridan on his death-bed, and would have sent more had not
death ended the career of that man of genius. Besides these, there are a
few pretty speeches, kind and graceful, to persons with whom he was
brought in contact. But he turned upon twenty friends. He was fond and
familiar with them one day, and he passed them on the next without
recognition. He used them, liked them, loved them perhaps in his way, and
then separated from them. On Monday he kissed and fondled poor Perdita,
and on Tuesday he met her and did not know her. On Wednesday he was very
a