We know with what fair prospects George III. ascended the throne, “glorying in the name of Briton,” as Bute is said to have prompted him in addressing a people of whom the majority would rather consider their king as born an Englishman. A true John Bull he proved to be in his sense of duty, in his narrow outlook, and in his pig-headed obstinacy. Too soon the sky clouded over this well-meaning Prince, who took pains to repair the deficiencies of his education, and had his character quickly developed in the light that pours upon a throne. The lessons of Kew had not been thrown away upon him. That unofficial tutor, hitherto kept behind the scenes, became his open counsellor, and presently Prime Minister, till overthrown by blasts of popular indignation excited against the unconstitutional politician, the slandered favourite, and the ambitious Scot, who made a magnet for drawing crowds of his hungry countrymen to the source of patronage. The young King shared the unpopularity of his adviser. He fell out with nobles and statesmen; from the mob his carriage had to be guarded by prize-fighters. And in the irony of fate, the cry of liberty swelled loudest round an unprincipled libertine, who, taking to patriotism as “the last refuge of a scoundrel,” quickly rose to be the idol of the mob, and made his fortune out of the cause in which he afterwards boasted that he never believed. “I never was a Wilkesite,” said Wilkes; but poor George was at least honest in his notions of governing. It looks like a satire on the British Constitution that our most virtuous and well-meaning kings have usually been those who did us most mischief. At that time a puppet would have been more welcome than a patriot king, but not a puppet whose wires were pulled by Bute. One thing cannot be denied by his worst enemies, that this king made an honest effort to rule himself, to lead a clean, simple and wholesome life, which did so much in the end to win back respect for royalty among the respectable classes. At the outset of his reign he seems ready to have married for love of the bewitching siren, Lady Sarah Lennox, who took care to be seen making hay on the lawn of Holland House, as the young king rode by on the road to Kew. But that mock-Arcadian romance was nipped in the bud by his managing mother, who made haste to look out a wife for him among the Protestant princesses of Germany. George “sighed as a lover, but obeyed as a son.” Lady Sarah, great-grand-daughter of Charles II. as she was, had to content herself with serving as bridesmaid to the new queen. She soon got over her disappointed ambition, marrying twice and dying at a good old age as mother of the famous soldier-brothers Napier. It is a touching coincidence that her old age was afflicted by blindness, like her royal sweetheart’s, who in his last days appears to have recalled or imagined an earlier passion for Lady Elizabeth Spencer, afterwards Countess of Pembroke.