.!'

"You may conceive the agreeable feelings of the wounded at this
intelligence! Happily, on further examination, it appeared that claret,
and not poison, was at the bottom of the colonel's exclamation."

And now I have one more story of the bacchanalian sort, in which Clarence
and York, and the very highest personage of the realm, the great Prince
Regent, all play parts. The feast took place at the Pavilion at Brighton,
and was described to me by a gentleman who was present at the scene. In
Gilray's caricatures, and amongst Fox's jolly associates, there figures a
great nobleman, the Duke of Norfolk, called Jockey of Norfolk in his time,
and celebrated for his table exploits. He had quarrelled with the prince,
like the rest of the Whigs; but a sort of reconciliation had taken place;
and now, being a very old man, the prince invited him to dine and sleep at
the Pavilion, and the old duke drove over from his castle of Arundel with
his famous equipage of grey horses, still remembered in Sussex.

The Prince of Wales had concocted with his royal brothers a notable scheme
for making the old man drunk. Every person at table was enjoined to drink
wine with the duke--a challenge which the old toper did not refuse. He soon
began to see that there was a conspiracy against him; he drank glass for
glass; he overthrew many of the brave. At last the First Gentleman of
Europe proposed bumpers of brandy. One of the royal brothers filled a
great glass for the duke. He stood up and tossed off the drink. "Now,"
says he, "I will have my carriage, and go home." The prince urged upon him
his previous promise to sleep under the roof where he had been so
generously entertained. "No," he said, he had had enough of such
hospitality. A trap had been set for him; he would leave the place at once
and never enter its doors more.

The carriage was called, and came; but, in the half-hour's interval, the
liquor had proved too potent for the old man; his host's generous purpose
was answered, and the duke's old grey head lay stupefied on the table.
Nevertheless, when his post-chaise was announced, he staggered to it as
well as he could, and stumbling in, bade the postilions drive to Arundel.
They drove him for half an hour round and round the Pavilion lawn; the
poor old man fancied he was going home. When he awoke that morning he was
in bed at the prince's hideous house at Brighton. You may see the place
now for sixpence: they have fiddlers there ever