The next event, however, in the life of the Prince of Wales, following quickly on the death of his mother, was the birth of his eldest son, afterwards to fill the throne of England as George the Third. This took place at Norfolk House, St. James’s, on the 4th of June (new style), 1738, while Carlton House was still under repair. The birth was premature, and the child very frail, so much so that he was baptized on the day of his birth. The Poet Laureate seized this opportunity of the birth of a Prince in the direct line of succession to the throne to become drivelling. He congratulated Nature that she had first amused herself by sketching a girl--Princess Augusta--by which bit of practice she had enabled herself to produce the wonderful baby George! Truly this Laureate was a person of some imagination! The Corporation of London appear to have gone to the King direct and in a talented address pointed out to him the fact--which perhaps otherwise might have been overlooked--that this joyful occasion was the result of the alliance of the baby’s parents! The Bath Municipality seem to have also done something in this way to distinguish themselves, by congratulating the Prince of Wales on his own birth, to which they owed the sight of the royal presence in which they stood. It may be mentioned here that on his first birthday little Prince George was the object of a curious attention. Sixty of the children of the aristocracy, dressed as little soldiers with drums beating and colours flying, entered the Palace and “elected their little Prince as their Colonel.” This important event concluded, they kissed the baby’s hand and departed. The Prince and his wife--to whom he was devoted--seem to have had a variety of residences. Norfolk House, Leicester House--formerly the residence of his father when Prince of Wales--situated in Leicester Square on a site very near where the Empire Theatre now stands; Carlton House in Pall Mall, a house at Kew, and a Palace at Cliefden, built by Villiers, situated on a terrace overlooking the River Thames. Here at this latter house the Prince seems to have lived the life of a country squire, and a lover of the river. He distributed prizes at rowing matches, and mixed freely with the people of the part. His dignity did not prevent him stopping to chat with a labourer at his cottage door, or even to enter in, and do what few Princes would condescend to do, sit down and share the cottager’s plain meal with him. He would play cricket on the lawn at Cliefden with his children, when they were old enough, or stroll along the banks of the river of which he was very fond, and his companions were not always of the exalted order one would expect. He was devoted to art, and loved talent wherever he found it. “Lord Sir,” exclaimed a simple country servant to his master one day at Maidenhead, “I have seen the Prince of Wales accompanied by his nobles.”