in Lewis describes some of these outbursts of
fury, and one in particular when he was the object of the prince's
wrath. Jenkin quietly turned him round to the looking-glass, so that the
boy might see what a shocking spectacle he was making of himself.
Whereupon his passion fell as quickly as it had risen. He grew calm upon
seeing himself, and expressed his sorrow.

When he was nine years old, the king appointed Bishop Burnet to be his
preceptor, and the Duke of Marlborough to be his governor.

The Bishop writes two years later, that he had made "amazing progress."
They had read together the Psalms, Proverbs and Gospels, and the bishop
had explained things that fell in his way "very copiously, and was often
surprised at the questions he put me, and the reflections that he made.
He came to understand things relating to religion beyond
imagination."[116] Besides religion the good bishop seems to have
crammed his pupil's head with a mass of knowledge--geography, forms of
government in every country, the interests and trades of every nation,
the history "of all the great revolutions that had been in the world;"
and he explained "the Gothic constitution and the beneficiary and feudal
laws."

No wonder that as one historian says, "his tender constitution bended
under the weight of his manly soul, and was too much harass'd by the
vivacity of his genius, to be of long duration.... In a word, he was too
forward to arrive at maturity."[117]

On July 24, 1700, the Duke of Gloucester was eleven years old. The next
day Bishop Burnet tells that he complained a little: but every one
thought he was tired with his birthday festivities. The day after he
grew rapidly worse. A malignant fever declared itself, and he "died on
the fourth day of his illness, to the great grief of all who were
concerned with him." He was buried quite quietly, in the same vault as
his great-uncle Henry, Duke of Gloucester, beside their common
ancestress, Mary, Queen of Scots.

The death of this little boy was an event of enormous importance to
England. The Stuart line was at an end, and the eyes of England now
turned to George Lewis, the Elector of Hanover, grandson of that
unfortunate Queen of Bohemia, who we know best as Princess Elizabeth,
the favorite sister and playfellow of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales.
And with the death of "the last hope of the race--thus withered, as it
must have seemed, by the doom of Providence"[118]--our history of the
chil