progress of the people, even the
worst sovereign could no longer do much to retard it.

[Sidenote: 1830: The Georges and the Stuarts]

The Four Georges had come and gone. A famous epoch in English history
had ended. Four princes of the same race, of the same name, had ruled in
succession over the English people. Practically, the reigns of the four
namesakes may be said to coincide with, to comprehend, and to represent
the history of the eighteenth century in England. The reign of George
the Fourth may be regarded as a survival from the eighteenth into the
nineteenth century, as the reign of Anne was a survival from the
seventeenth into the eighteenth century. In all the changes of that long
and eventful age one change is very memorable and significant. The
position of the dynasty was very different when George the Fourth died
from what it was when his great-great-grandfather came over unwillingly
from Germany to grasp the sceptre. When the Elector of Hanover became
King of England, the Stuart party was still a power in political life and
the Stuart cause the dearest hope of a very large number of devoted
Englishmen. It might well be hard for men to realize in the days of
George the Fourth that in the reign of the first George and in the reign
of the second George the throne reeled beneath the blows which the armed
adherents of the exiled Stuart princes struck at the supremacy of the
sovereigns of the House of Brunswick. Even when the third George came to
the throne there were still desperate dreamers who hoped against hope
that something, anything, might happen which would allow the King--the
King over the {95} water--to enjoy his own again. When the last of the
Georges passed away, the Stuart cause had been buried for nearly half a
century in that grave in Rome which encloses the remains of the last and
perhaps the most unhappy of the Stuart princes.

{96}

WILLIAM THE FOURTH.

CHAPTER LXIX.

KING WILLIAM THE FOURTH.

[Sidenote: 1830--The career of William the Fourth]

William the Fourth, as the Duke of Clarence had now become, was nearing
the completion of his sixty-fifth year when the death of his brother
raised him to the throne. He had surely had full time in which to
prepare himself for the business of a monarch, for during a long period
it was well known that nothing was likely to stand between him and the
succession except the life of his elder brother, the Duke of York. But
William