where he is opposed by a system which looks on sharpness as a virtue, and holds that nothing succeeds like success. Let us get back from this subject to the English court of a century since. A new year’s day at court was in the last century a gala day, which made London tradesmen rejoice. There were some extraordinary figures at that of 1773, at St. James’s, but no one looked so much out of ordinary fashion as Lord Villiers. His coat was of pale purple velvet turned up with lemon colour, ‘and embroidered all over’ (says Mrs. Delany) ‘with SSes of pearl as big as peas, and in all the spaces little medallions in beaten gold--_real solid_! in various figures of Cupids _and the like_!’ The court troubles of the year were not insignificant; but the good people below stairs had their share of them. If the King continued to be vexed at the marriages of his brothers Gloucester and Cumberland with English ladies, the King’s servants had sorrows of their own. The newspapers stated that ‘the wages of his Majesty’s servants were miserably in arrear; that their families were consequently distressed, and that there was great clamour for payment.’ The court was never more bitterly satirised than in some lines put in circulation (as Colley Cibber’s) soon after Lord Chesterfield’s death, to whom they were generally ascribed. They were written before the decease of Frederick, Prince of Wales. The laureate was made to say-- Colley Cibber, right or wrong, Must celebrate this day, And tune once more his tuneless song And strum the venal lay. Heav’n spread through all the family That broad, illustrious glare, That shines so flat in every eye And makes them all so stare! Heav’n send the Prince of royal race A little coach and horse, A little meaning in his face, And money in his purse. And, as I have a son like yours, May he Parnassus rule. So shall the crown and laurel too Descend from fool to fool. Satire was, indeed, quite as rough in prose as it was sharp in song. One of the boldest paragraphs ever penned by paragraph writers of the time appeared in the ‘Public Advertiser’ in the summer of 1773. A statue of the King had been erected in Berkeley Square. The discovery was soon made that the King himself had paid for it. Accordingly, the ‘Public Advertiser’ audaciously informed him that he had paid for his statue, because he well knew that none would ever be spontaneously erected in his honour by posterity. The ‘Advertiser’ further advised George III. to build his own mausoleum for the same reason.