_civil_ to both of them. The reconciliation was worth an additional fifty thousand pounds a-year to the prince, so that obedience to a father could hardly be more munificently rewarded. ‘He will have money now,’ says Walpole, ‘to tune up Glover, and Thomson, and Dodsley again:-- Et spes et ratio studiorum in Cæsare tantum.’ There was much outward show of gladness at this court, pageants and ‘reviews to gladden the heart of David and triumphs of Absalom,’ as Walpole styles his Majesty and the heir-apparent. The latter, with the princess, went ‘in great parade through the city and the dust to dine at Greenwich. They took water at the Tower, and trumpeting away to Grace Tosier’s-- Like Cimon, triumphed over land and wave.’ In another direction, there were some lively proceedings, which would have amused Caroline herself. Tranquil and dull as Kensington Palace looks, its apartments were occasionally the scene of more rude than royal _fracas_. Thus we are told of one of the daughters of the King pulling a chair from under the Countess Deloraine, just as that not too exemplary lady was about to sit down to cards. His Majesty laughed at the lady’s tumble, at which she was so doubly pained, that, watching for revenge and opportunity, she contrived to give the Sovereign just such another fall. The sacred person of the King was considerably bruised, and the trick procured nothing more for the countess than exclusion from court, where her place of favour was exclusively occupied by Madame Walmoden, Countess of Yarmouth. We often hear of the wits of one era being the butts of the next, and without wit enough left to escape the shafts let fly at them. Walpole thus describes a drawing-room held at St. James’s, to which some courtiers resorted in the dresses they had worn under Queen Anne. ‘There were so many new faces,’ says Horace, ‘that I scarce knew where I was; I should have taken it for Carlton House, or my Lady Mayoress’s visiting day, only the people did not seem enough at home, but rather as admitted to see the King dine in public. It is quite ridiculous to see the number of old ladies, who, from having been wives of patriots, have not been dressed these twenty years; out they come with all the accoutrements that were in use in Queen Anne’s days. Then the joy and awkward jollity of them is inexpressible; they titter, and, wherever you meet them, are always going to court, and looking at their watches an hour before the time. I met several at the birth-day, and they were dressed in all the colours of the rainbow; they seem to have said to themselves twenty years ago: “Well; if I ever do go to court again, I will have a pink and silver, or a blue and silver,” and they kept their resolutions.’