We ought to know something of the personality of this king who came to the head of the British household while all these keen brains were astir in it, and within the limits of whose rule the American Revolution began, and ended in the establishment of a new nationality; while the French Revolution too gathered its seething forces, and shot up its lurid flame and fell away into the fiery mastership of Napoleon. You will remember that George II. was son of George I., who inherited through his mother, Sophia (of Brunswick), who was granddaughter of old King James I. of Scotland and England. George III. was not the son--but a grandson--of George II. His father, Prince Frederic, who lived to mature years, who wrote some poor poetry--who was generous, wayward, incompetent, always at issue with father and mother {182} both--was a man nobody much respected and nobody greatly mourned for. It was of him that a squib-like epitaph was written, which I suppose expressed pretty justly popular indifference respecting him and others of his family:-- Here lies Fred, Who was alive and is dead. Had it been his father I had much rather; Had it been his sister, No one would have missed her. But since 'tis only Fred Who was alive and is dead, There's no more to be said. George III. was severely brought up by his mother and by old Lord Bute; taught to be every inch a king; and he was royally stiff and obstinate to the last. Two romantic episodes attaching to his young days belong to the royal traditions--in which a pretty Quakeress, and that beautiful Sarah Lennox--whose portrait by Reynolds now hangs in Holland House--both figure; but these episodes are of vague and shadowy outline, almost mythical, with issues only of the Maud Muller sort--they sighing "it might have been," and he--not {183} sighing at all. It is certain that he accepted complacently and contentedly the bride Charlotte, who came over to him from Germany; and alone of all the quartette of Georges, made a devoted and constant husband as long as he reigned. But if he did not give his queen heart-aches in the usual Georgian fashion, I have no doubt that he gave her many a heart-ache of other sorts; for he was bigoted, unyielding, austere, and, like most men, selfish. He had his notions about meal-times and prayer-time, and getting-up time, and about what meals should be eaten and what not eaten; under this discipline wife and children grew up--until the boys made their escape, which they did actively. Yet this old gentleman of the crown is considerate too--more perhaps outside his palace than within: he purposes no unkindness; he indulges in pleasant chit-chat with his humble neighbors at Windsor; has sometimes half-crowns by him for poor favorites; cherishes homely tastes; knows a good pig when he sees it, and can test the fat upon a bullock with a punch of his staff. He professed a certain art knowledge, too--but always loved the spectacular, melodramatic works of