est became affected, the lungs completely decayed,
blood was mingled with the expectoration, and general debility rapidly
ensued. His end was evidently near; and a short time before it
took place his physicians intimated to his majesty that all further
endeavours to avert the stroke of death would be unavailing. He calmly
answered, "God's will be done," and subsequently received the sacrament
from the hands of the Bishop of Chichester. Soon after his voice became
faint and low, and for several days his words were scarcely articulated;
his sleep also was broken and disturbed. At length, on the night of the
25th of June, the angel of death once more approached the palace of
the kings of England. He had slept little during the evening, and from
eleven to three was in a restless slumber, opening his eyes occasionally
when the cough caused great pain. At three o'clock his majesty beckoned
to the page in waiting to alter his position, and the couch, constructed
for the purpose, was gently raised, and the sufferer lifted to his
chair. At that moment, however, a blood-vessel burst, and his attendants
hastened to apply the usual stimulants, and to call in the physicians.
The royal patient himself perceived that his dissolution was at hand,
and exclaimed, "O God, I am dying!" then in a few seconds he added, in
a whisper scarcely audible, "This is death!" and when the physicians
entered the apartment George IV. had ceased to breathe.

The decease of the monarch had become so much an object of daily
expectation, and for years he had lived so much retired from his people,
that his death excited less sensation than commonly follows that of
English monarchs. Moreover, George IV. was not one of the most popular
monarchs in English history.

As soon as the decease of his majesty was known, his next brother,
William Henry, Duke of Clarence, was proclaimed by the title of William
IV. The new monarch in a short time rendered himself very popular by the
plainness of his habits and manners, and by the condescension, or rather
the familiarity of his intercourse with his people--qualities which
rendered him more popular by a comparison with the secluded life of his
predecessors. No immediate change took place in the government, for
his majesty, after the usual oaths for the security of the church of
Scotland, having signed the instruments requisite at the commencement
of a new reign, re-appointed the judges and other great officers of
the sta