Lord Vincent, the first lord of the admiralty, declared on the 2nd of March that not only was his Majesty much better, but that, throughout the present attack, he had never been so ill as he was at the moment when, in his previous illness, he had been pronounced by Warren to be convalescent. The King’s fever increased alarmingly that very night. On Tuesday, the 3rd of March, Lord Malmesbury thus graphically describes the crisis: ‘King so much worse last night that his life was despaired of. About ten he fell into a profound sleep; and awoke in about six hours quite refreshed and quite himself. His Majesty said he was thirsty, and, on being asked what he wished to drink, said, “if _allowed_, a glass of cold water.” This was given him. It put him into a perspiration. He fell asleep again, and awoke in the morning with the fever abated, and better in every respect. The crisis of his disorder. Crowds of people round Queen’s House, and their expressions of joy very great.’ The cure, however, was not yet complete. Much care was required. The King was disposed to talk on that very subject which had temporarily threatened to overthrow his intellect. And his anxiety for the Church, joined to seeing and conversing with two of his daughters before he was strong enough to argue the question connected with one, or to bear the pleasant excitement of intercourse with his family, produced a disagreeable, although not an enduring, relapse. The Prince of Wales was the most reluctant of his family to believe in the recovery of his father, whom he openly declared as being more deranged than ever, although he might possibly be improving in bodily health. He affected to complain of being kept in ignorance of what was going on at the Queen’s House; but his ignorance arose from the little care he gave himself to become wiser. The recovery, however, was considered genuine. The illness itself had been marked by one circumstance which distinguishes it from that under which the King suffered so severely in 1788. In the earlier attack sleep never relieved him. Not that he did not sleep well, but that it did not compose his nervous system. He would sleep indeed, soundly, but awake from it, like a giant refreshed by wine, more turbulent than ever. In the illness from which he had just recovered his sleep was healthy and refreshing, and he invariably woke from it quiet and composed.