During the hour which his mother spent with the Princess and the Royal baby, not a word passed between mother and son, and exception is taken to the fact that when the Queen observed that “she feared she was troublesome,” nobody had the politeness to say she was not. At the conclusion of the visit, the Prince very properly led his mother down to her coach, and arriving at it, did something which greatly exasperated Lord Hervey and Horace Walpole; he knelt down in the dirty street and kissed his mother’s hand! What a terrible thing for a son to do! What an outrage! Both Hervey and Horace Walpole try to make out that he did it for effect, and to inspire the people who were looking on; but is it not much more likely that both Hervey and Walpole--and perhaps the people in the street, too, would have had a great deal more to say if he had _not_ done it, for it was the common etiquette of the Court, and remains very much the same to the present day. But there was another interest about this parting, too. It was the last time that mother and son ever met on earth. In such fashion were the sayings and doings of this Prince, _who was not wanted_, continually distorted by those around the King and Queen, and yet they never succeeded in shaking his popularity with the people. Lord Hardwicke, the Lord Chancellor, has left an account behind him of an interview with the Prince about this time, which throws some light on the reason for the secret removal of the Princess from Hampton Court. “On the fourth day of August,” writes Lord Hardwicke, “the day of proroguing the Parliament, I went to St. James’s in my way to Westminster in order to inquire after the health of the Princess of Wales and the new-born Princess. After I had performed that ceremony, I went away, and was overtaken at the further end of Pall Mall by one of the Prince’s footmen, with a message that His Royal Highness desired to speak with me. Being returned, I was carried into the nursery, whither the Prince came immediately, out of the Princess’s bedchamber, and turned all the ladies out of the room.” Shade of Earl Cairns! what should we think in these days if we heard of the Lord High Chancellor of England being shown into the nursery at Marlborough House when on a visit of ceremony, and “all the ladies being turned out,” and apparently the baby too, to give the Prince of Wales an opportunity of talking serious State matters with his lordship?