This scene of a Queen whose high moral character and purity of taste have been long matters of eulogy, seated amid her daughters, listening to a farce which would hardly now be tolerated, is not pleasant. But society had not yet freed itself from the uncleanness with which it had been overwhelmed during the two preceding reigns. The unspeakable degradation into which the first two Georges dragged the country must not be forgotten, though it may not be detailed. While detesting the restrictions with which monarchy had been loaded in the great revolution, they indulged unrestrainedly in the worst coarseness of vice. Kept back from pressing despotically upon the people, they yielded unbridled sway to their own passions, and their infamous example corrupted three-fourths of society. Caroline herself would listen to stories told her by Sir Robert Walpole, upon which the eye of the student of history cannot rest without a blush of indignation mantling in his cheek. If the Stuarts were vicious, they were, in a certain degree, gentlemanlike in their vices. The first two Georges were as vicious, but they had none of the refinement of the Stuarts, and would have been to the full as tyrannical had the men of England left them the power. Their conduct was enough to render monarchy detested, and the name of Brunswick execrable. The domestic virtues of George III. and Queen Charlotte insured respect for the first, and surrounded the latter name with something like a halo of love. If there be any yet among us who sing ‘Hail, Star of Brunswick!’ with any mental reservation, the reason may probably be traced to impressions received from the records of the first Georges. The tone of society had not yet recovered itself fully when Queen Charlotte caused ‘Polly Honeycomb’ to be read aloud to herself and daughters. It is true that her Majesty also listened in like company to the teaching of Mrs. Hannah More; but even that high moralist hardly as yet understood how the work of morality might best be sped. Even ten years later than the time when Colman’s farces were deemed not unfitting to be read to an audience of mother and children, Mrs. More, in ‘Cœlebs,’ was recommending the observance of modesty on the part of ladies on very selfish grounds. In allusion to the ‘naked style’ of dress which was then the fashion with women, Mrs. More admonitorily and significantly exclaims: ‘Oh, if women in general knew what was their real interest; if they could guess with what a charm even the appearance of modesty invests its possessor, they would dress decorously from mere self-love, if not from principle. The designing would assume modesty as an artifice; the coquet would adopt it as an allurement; the pure as her appropriate attraction; and the voluptuous as the most infallible art of seduction.’ When the Reverend Sydney Smith read this passage, he remarked that if there were any truth in it, ‘nudity becomes a virtue, and no decent woman for the