The favourite son of Caroline, and the favourite brother of the Princess Amelia, died on the last day of October. His health had long been precarious: he had, like his mother, grown extremely corpulent, and his sight had nearly perished. Indeed, he could only see, and that very imperfectly, with one eye--and yet he was comparatively but a young man; not more than forty-four years of age. His course of life, both in its duties, and its so-called pleasures, had made an old man of him before his time. He had had a paralytic stroke, was much afflicted with asthma, and suffered continually from a wound in the leg, which he had received in his first great battle, at Dettingen, and which had never healed. He was born when his mother was yet Princess of Wales. She loved him because he was daring and original; qualities which he evinced by his replies to her when she was lecturing him as a wayward child. For the same reasons was he liked by his grandfather, at whose awkward English the graceless grandson laughed loudly, and mimicked it admirably. It is not astonishing that his mother loved him, for as he grew in years he (up to a certain time) grew in grace and dignity. In outward bearing, as in mental endowments, he was very superior to his brother, the Prince of Wales: he was gentlemanlike without affectation; and accomplished without being vain of his accomplishments. Never was a prince so popular, so winning in his ways, as William of Cumberland during his minority. He was but twenty-two years of age when he accompanied George II. to the field and shared in the bloody honours of the day at Dettingen. The honours he reaped here, however, were fatal to him. They led to his being placed in chief command of an army before he was fitted to do more than lead a brigade. In ’45, when the French invested Tournay under Marshal Saxe, the son of Aurora Königsmark, the Duke of Cumberland was placed in command of the English and Dutch forces, numerically very inferior to the foe, and charged with leading them to force the enemy to raise the siege. The attempt was made in the great battle of Fontenoy, where we gained a victory, and yet were vanquished. We beat the enemy, but, through want of caution, exposed ourselves to a cross fire of batteries, against which valour was impotent. It cost us ten thousand men and unmerited loss of reputation. The rose which had fallen from his chaplet the duke replaced at Culloden, where he fought one of the battles whereby the hopes of the Stuarts were crushed in half an hour. The alleged severity of the young general, after the battle, gave him the name of the ‘Butcher.’ The duke was not ashamed of the name. He wore it with as much complacency as though it had been a decoration. With regard to his severities, it may be said that, terrible as they were, they had the effect of deterring men from rushing into another rebellion, which would have cost more blood than the duke ever caused to be shed by way of prevention.