Horace Walpole has left a description of King George which is worth citation. "The person of the King," he says, "is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him yesterday; it was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his pictures and coins; not tall, of an aspect rather good than august, with a dark tie-wig, a plain coat, waistcoat and breeches of snuff-colored cloth, with stockings of the {59} same color, and a blue ribbon over all." George was fond of heavy dining and heavy drinking. He often dined at Sir Robert Walpole's, at Richmond Hill, where he used to drink so much punch that even the Duchess of Kendal endeavored to restrain him, and received in return some coarse admonition in German. He was shy and reserved in general, and he detested all the troublesome display of royalty. He hated going to the theatre in state, and he did not even care to show himself in front of the royal box; he preferred to sit in another and less conspicuous box with the Duchess of Kendal and Lady Walsingham. On the whole, it would seem as if the inclination of the English people for the Hanoverian dynasty was about to be tried by the severest test that fate could well ordain. A dull, stolid, and profligate king, fond of drink and of low conversation, without dignity of appearance or manner, without sympathy of any kind with the English people and English ways, and without the slightest knowledge of the English language, was suddenly thrust upon the people and proclaimed their king. Fortunately for the Hanoverian dynasty, the English people, as a whole, had grown into a mood of comparative indifference as to who should rule them so long as they were let alone. It was impossible that a strong feeling of loyalty to any House should burn just then in the breast of the great majority of the English people. Those who were devoted to the Stuarts and those who detested the Stuarts felt strongly on the subject this way or that, and they would therefore admire or detest King George according to their previously acquired political principles. But to the ordinary Englishman it only seemed that England had lately been trying a variety of political systems and a variety of rulers; that one seemed to succeed hardly better than the other; that so long as no great breakdown in the system took place, it mattered little whether a Stuart or a Brunswick was in temporary possession of the throne. Within a comparatively short space of time the English Parliament had deposed Charles the First; the Protectorate had been {60} tried under Cromwell; the Restoration had been brought about by the adroitness of Monk; James the Second, a Catholic, had come to the throne, and had been driven off the throne by William the Third; William had established a new dynasty and a new system, which was no sooner established than it had to be succeeded by the introduction to the throne of one of the daughters of the displaced House of Stuart.