This year (1814) the Princess Charlotte, heiress presumptive actually ran away in a hackney coach, to avoid being affianced to the Prince of Orange, to whom Her Royal Highness evinced an invincible repugnance. The event is referred to in a caricature entitled, _Plebeian Spirit, or Coachee and the Heiress Presumptive_ (published by Fores on the 25th of July), which shows us the princess emerging from Warwick House, followed by Britannia (who raises her hands in a suppliant attitude), and the dejected British lion. "Coachman, will you protect me?" she appeals to the driver. "Yes, yes, your Highness," replies the fellow, "to the last drop of my blood!" A servant in the royal livery holds up his hands in amazement and horror, while another spurs off in hot haste to apprise the Regent of the flight of his daughter. But a satire of far superior merit, entitled, _Miss endeavouring to excite a glow with her Dutch Plaything_,[20] was issued by the same publisher a few days previously, in which the rejected prince figures as a Dutch top, which the princess has kept spinning for some time. "There," she says to her father at last, "I have kept it up for a long while; you may send it away now, I am tired of it; mother [_i.e._ the Princess Caroline] has got some better plaything for me." "What! are you tired already?" exclaims the Regent. "Take another spell at it, or give me the whip." "No, no," replies Her Royal Highness; "you may take the top, but I'll keep the whip." Behind her is a picture representing an orange falling with Cupid headlong into space. The Regent was so incensed at his daughter's refractoriness, that he went at once to Warwick House and dismissed all her attendants, and never forgave the Duke of Sussex for his supposed share in breaking off the connection. It was immediately after this event that her mother, the Princess Caroline, contrary to the advice of her friends and well-wishers, applied for permission to make that tour on the Continent which, owing to her own obstinate folly and contempt for the duties of her high station, was destined--as we shall afterwards find--to end in such disastrous consequences to herself. 1812 1815. AMERICA AND ENGLAND.