far
from having the least portion of wit in that age, who was superior
to its indelicacy, and who yet was so overborne by its prejudices,
that he had the complaisance to ridicule virtue, merit, talents.
--But Prince Rupert, alas! was an awkward lover!" Lord Orford here
inserts the character in the text, and then adds, "What pity that
we, who wish to transmit this prince's resemblance to posterity on a
fairer canvas, have none of these inimitable colours to efface the
harsher likeness! We can but oppose facts to wit, truth to satire.
--How unequal the pencils! yet what these lines cannot do they may
suggest: they may induce the reader to reflect, that if the prince
was defective in the transient varnish of a court, he at least was
adorned by the arts with that polish which alone can make a court
attract the attention of subsequent ages."--Catalogue of Engravers,
p 135, 8vo ed.]

He was brave and courageous, even to rashness; but cross-grained and
incorrigibly obstinate: his genius was fertile in mathematical
experiments, and he possessed some knowledge of chemistry: he was polite
even to excess, unseasonably; but haughty, and even brutal, when he ought
to have been gentle and courteous: he was tall, and his manners were
ungracious: he had a dry hard-favoured visage, and a stern look, even
when he wished to please; but, when he was out of humour, he was the true
picture of reproof.

The queen had sent for the players, either that there might be no
intermission in the diversions of the place, or, perhaps, to retort upon
Miss Stewart, by the presence of Nell Gwyn, part of the uneasiness she
felt from hers. Prince Rupert found charms in the person of another
player called Hughes, who brought down and greatly subdued his natural
fierceness.

[Mrs. Hughes was one of the actresses belonging to the king's
company, and one of the earliest female performers. According to
Downs, she commenced her theatrical career after the opening of
Drury lane theatre, in 1663. She appears to have been the first
female representative of Desdemona. By Prince Rupert she had a
daughter, named Ruperta, married to Lieutenant-general Howe, who
survived her husband many years, dying at Somerset house, about the
year 1740.]

From this time, adieu alembics, crucibles, furnaces, and all the black
furniture of the forges: a complete farewell to all mathematical
instruments and chemical s