But it was not only the peace of the King, his very palaces were put in peril at this time. The installation of Lady Yarmouth at Kensington, after the _fracas_ occasioned by Lady Deloraine, had nearly resulted in the destruction of the palace. Lady Yarmouth resided in the room which had been occupied by Lady Suffolk, who disregarded damp, and cared nothing for the crop of fungi raised by it in her room. Not so Lady Yarmouth, at least after she had contracted an ague. She then kept up such a fire that the woodwork caught, and destruction to the edifice was near upon following. There were vacant chambers enough, and sufficiently comfortable; but the King would not allow them to be inhabited, even by his favourite. ‘The King hoards all he can,’ writes Walpole, ‘and has locked up half the palace since the Queen’s death; so he does at St. James’s; and I believe would put the rooms out at interest if he could get a closet a-year for them.’ The division which had again sprung up between sire and son daily widened until death relieved the former of his permanent source of vexation. This event took place in 1751. Some few years previous to that period, the Prince of Wales, when playing at tennis or cricket, at Cliefden, received a blow from a ball, which gave him some pain, but of which he thought little. It was neglected; and one result of such neglect was a permanent weakness of the lungs. In the early part of this year he had suffered from pleurisy, but had recovered--at least, partially recovered. A previous fall from his horse had rendered him more than usually delicate. Early in March he had been in attendance at the House of Lords on occasion of the King, his father, giving his royal sanction to some bills. This done, the prince returned, much heated, in a chair with the windows down, to Carlton House. He changed his dress, put on light, unaired clothing, and, as if _that_ had not been perilous enough, he had the madness, after hurrying to Kew and walking about the gardens there in very inclement weather, to lie down for three hours after his return to Carlton House, upon a couch in a very cold room which opened upon the gardens. Lord Egmont alluded to the danger of such a course; the prince laughed at the thought. He was as obstinate as his father, to whom Sir Robert Walpole once observed, on finding him equally intractable during a fit of illness, ‘Sir, do you know what your father died of? Of thinking he could not die.’ The prince removed to Leicester House. He ridiculed good counsel, and before the next morning his life was in danger. He rallied, and during one of his hours of least suffering he sent for his eldest son, and, embracing him with tenderness, remarked, ‘Come, George, let us be good friends while we are permitted to be so.’ Three physicians, with Wilmot and Hawkins, the surgeons, were in constant attendance upon him, and, curiously enough, their united wisdom pronounced that the prince