to
find men who would faithfully perform their duties and leave him leisure
to live his own beautiful life. I regret immensely that his part in
politics did not cease here. The state of the country and of his own
finances, and also, I fear, a certain love that he had imbibed for
political manipulation, prevented him from standing aside. How useless
was all the finesse he displayed in the long-drawn question of Catholic
Emancipation! How lamentable his terror of Lord Wellesley's rude
dragooning! And is there not something pitiable in the thought of the
Regent at a time of ministerial complications lying prone on his bed
with a sprained ankle, and taking, as was whispered, in one day as many
as seven hundred drops of laudanum? Some said he took these doses to
deaden the pain. But others, and among them his brother Cumberland,
declared that the sprain was all a sham. I hope it was. The thought of
a voluptuary in pain is very terrible. In any case, I cannot but feel
angry, for Georges own sake and that of his kingdom, that he found
it impossible to keep further aloof from the wearisome troubles of
political life. His wretched indecision of character made him an easy
prey to unscrupulous ministers, while his extraordinary diplomatic
powers and almost extravagant tact made them, in their turn, an easy
prey to him. In these two processes much of his genius was spent
untimely. I must confess that he did not quite realise where his duties
ended. He wished always to do too much. If you read his repeated appeals
to his father that he might be permitted to serve actively in the
British army against the French, you will acknowledge that it was
through no fault of his own that he did not fight. It touches me to
think that in his declining years he actually thought that he had led
one of the charges at Waterloo. He would often describe the whole scene
as it appeared to him at that supreme moment, and refer to the Duke of
Wellington, saying, 'Was it not so, Duke?' 'I have often heard you say
so, your Majesty,' the old soldier would reply, grimly. I am not sure
that the old soldier was at Waterloo himself. In a room full of
people he once referred to the battle as having been won upon the
playing-fields of Eton. This was certainly a most unfortunate slip,
seeing that all historians are agreed that it was fought on a certain
field situate a few miles from Brussels.

In one of his letters to the King, craving for a military appointment,