speak plainly, if not mad, she was a very worthless woman.’ So wrote one who had asserted directly the contrary. But it was the lot of this unhappy Queen to be persecuted even after death. Her will, in which she bequeathed the little she had to leave to William Austin, the protégé, who did not long survive her, contained a clause to this effect: ‘I desire and direct that my body be not opened, and that three days after my death it be carried to Brunswick for interment, and that the inscription on my coffin be, “Here lies Caroline of Brunswick, the injured Queen of England.”’ The government, acting under alleged orders from the King, but influenced, no doubt, by a wish not to mar the festivities attendant upon the visit of George IV. to Ireland, by allowing the Queen’s body to remain longer than needful in England, announced their intention to pay every sort of respect to the orders and wishes of her late Majesty, and to despatch the body to Harwich at once, for embarkation. The personal friends of Caroline protested against this unseemly readiness, on the part of the ministers, to obey the wishes of one who, when alive, never had a wish that was not thwarted. Lady Hood addressed a letter to Lord Liverpool, not so much, indeed, as she said to _him_, as to his heart. The letter pleaded for delay, on the ground of the Queen’s ladies being unprepared; and it expressly protested against the intended military escort, as being an honour never allowed to the Queen when living, and one not certainly desired by her, who was sufficiently guarded by the people’s love. Reply was made that the arrangements already resolved upon were irrevocable, and that, if the ladies were not provided with the necessary mourning, there would be nothing disrespectful in waiting behind till they had been furnished with what was necessary, and then joining in the procession anywhere on its route. There was a singular want of courtesy in all the communications made by the ministry to the friends of the Queen. The latter could not even learn by what route the body would be conveyed to Harwich. The most direct road was through the City of London, and the mayor and corporation had announced their intention to attend on the royal remains on the passage through the City. The government curtly intimated that the funeral _cortège_ would not be allowed to pass through the City at all. From the same source it was subsequently learned that the coffin would be carried by the circuitous route of the New Road to Romford, and then by the direct road to Harwich. The popular disgust was justifiably great. Lord Liverpool asserted that he and his colleagues were influenced only by feelings which prompted them to show full respect to the wishes of the deceased Queen. How very little the noble lord was really influenced by the feelings in question may be seen in Dean Pellew’s Life of Lord Sidmouth. In that work there is a letter from Lord Liverpool, in which the writer says that he would