The court of King George the Second and Queen Caroline was conducted on a larger scale than any court England had known since the days of Charles the Second, though it lacked much of the gaiety and more of the grace that enlivened and adorned the court of the Merry Monarch. George the Second was a great lover of show, but he had neither wit nor good taste, and when he assumed the crown he seemed to think that he ought also to assume a stiffness and pomposity of manner to maintain his regal dignity. Like all German princes he was a great stickler for etiquette, and he modelled his court not only on Versailles, which then served as a pattern for all the courts of Europe, but imported to it some of the dulness of Herrenhausen, and further regulated it with strict regard to English precedents in previous reigns. The court officials were often very hard put to it to unearth them. But the King was exceedingly precise and resented the most trifling breach of etiquette as a reflection on his royal dignity. He was a great authority on dress and ceremonial; he could tell to a hair’s-breadth the precise width of the gold braid which should adorn the coat of a gentleman of the bedchamber, and recall with accuracy the number of buttons required for the vest of a page of the backstairs. The Queen encouraged and applauded his bent in this direction; it occupied his mind and left her free to arrange with Walpole the weightier affairs of the nation. Leicester House was given up and the court made St. James’s Palace its headquarters in London. All the Hanoverian mistresses and favourites who had occupied apartments there during the last reign were turned out without ceremony. The court of Queen Caroline was more select than that of George the First. Drunkenness was still a venial offence, but it was not approved of in the royal presence, and women of notoriously ill repute were no longer received at St. James’s. When the court was at St. James’s, drawing-rooms were held several times a week, public days as they were called, and the King and Queen gave frequent audiences besides. Court balls often took place, and at the evening drawing-rooms cards and high play were still in vogue. Every movement of the King and Queen in public was made the occasion of ceremonial; they attended divine service at the Chapel Royal in state; they walked in St. James’s Park followed by a numerous suite, the way kept clear by guards; they seldom drove out unless preceded by an escort; their visits to the theatre or opera were always announced beforehand, and their coming and going made the occasion of a spectacle. The people, with whom the pomp and circumstance of Royalty is always popular, loved these sights mightily, and all classes were pleased that there was once more a court in London. The King and Queen also revived the custom of dining in public on Sundays. One of the large state rooms of St. James’s Palace