xtant, the scribblers mocked his loneliness. At
Whites, one evening, four gentlemen of high fashion vowed, over their
wine, they would see the invisible monarch. So they rode down next day
to Windsor, and secreted themselves in the branches of a holm-oak. Here
they waited perdus, beguiling the hours and the frost with their flasks.
When dusk was falling, they heard at last the chime of hoofs on the
hard road, and saw presently a splash of the Royal livery, as two grooms
trotted by, peering warily from side to side, and disappeared in the
gloom. The conspirators in the tree held their breath, till they caught
the distant sound of wheels. Nearer and louder came the sound, and
soon they saw a white, postillioned pony, a chaise and, yes, girth
immensurate among the cushions, a weary monarch, whose face, crimson
above the dark accumulation of his stock, was like some ominous
sunset.... He had passed them and they had seen him, monstrous and
moribund among the cushions. He had been borne past them like a wounded
Bacchanal. The King! The Regent!... They shuddered in the frosty
branches. The night was gathering and they climbed silently to the
ground, with an awful, indispellible image before their eyes.

You see, these gentlemen were not philosophers. Remember, also, that
the strangeness of their escapade, the cramped attitude they had been
compelled to maintain in the branches of the holm-oak, the intense
cold and their frequent resort to the flask must have all conspired to
exaggerate their emotions and prevent them from looking at things in a
rational way. After all, George had lived his life. He had lived more
fully than any other man. And it was better really that his death should
be preceded by decline. For every one, obviously, the most desirable
kind of death is that which strikes men down, suddenly, in their prime.
Had they not been so dangerous, railways would never have ousted the
old coaches from popular favour. But, however keenly we may court such
a death for ourselves or for those who are near and dear to us, we
must always be offended whenever it befall one in whom our interest is
aesthetic merely. Had his father permitted George to fight at Waterloo,
and had some fatal bullet pierced the padding of that splendid breast,
I should have been really annoyed, and this essay would never have
been written. Sudden death mars the unity of an admirable life. Natural
decline, tapering to tranquillity, is its proper end. A