George III.'s long reign was drawing to a close. What changes it had seen from the War of American Independence to Waterloo! What woeful personal contrasts since the honest, kindly, comely lad, in his simple kingliness, rode out in the summer sunshine past Holland House, where lady Sarah Lennox was making hay on the lawn, to the days when the blind, mad old king sat in bodily and mental darkness, isolated from the wife and children he had loved so well, immured in his distant palace-rooms in royal Windsor. His silver beard o'er a bosom spread Unvexed by life's commotion, Like a yearly lengthening snow-drift shed On the calm of a frozen ocean: Still o'er him oblivion's waters lay, Though the stream of time kept flowing When they spoke of our King, 'twas but to say That the old man's strength was going. At intervals thus the waves disgorge, By weakness rent asunder, A piece of the wreck of the _Royal George_ For the people's pity and wonder. Lady Sarah, too, became blind in her age, and, alas! she had trodden darker paths than any prepared for her feet by the visitation of God. Queen Charlotte had come with her sense and spirit, and ruled for more than fifty years over a pure Court in England. The German princess of sixteen, with her spare little person and large mouth which prevented her from being comely, and her solitary accomplishment of playing on the harpsichord with as much correctness and taste as if she had been taught by Mr. Handel himself, had identified herself with the nation, so that no suspicion of foreign proclivities ever attached to her. Queen Charlotte bore her trials gravely; while those who came nearest to her could tell that she was not only a fierce little dragon of virtue, as she has been described, but a loving woman, full of love's wounds and scars. The family of George III. and Queen Charlotte consisted of seven sons and his daughters, besides two sons who died in infancy. George, Prince of Wales, married, 1795, his cousin, Princess Caroline of Brunswick, daughter of the reigning Duke and of Princess Augusta, sister of George III. The Prince and Princess of Wales separated soon after their marriage. Their only child was Princess Charlotte of Wales. Frederick, Duke of York, married, 1791, Princess Frederica, daughter of the reigning King of Prussia. The couple were childless. William, Duke of Clarence, married, 1818, Princess Adelaide, of Saxe-Meiningen. Two daughters were born to them, but both died in infancy. Edward, Duke of Kent, married, 1818, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, widow of the Prince of Leiningen. Their only child is QUEEN VICTORIA. Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, married, 1815, Princess Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, widow, first of Prince Frederick Louis of Prussia, and second, of the Prince of Saliris-Braunfels. Their only child was George V., King of Hanover. Augustus, Duke of Sussex, married morganatically.