There was, however, no appearance of any sense of peril at Court, where gaiety with a certain amount of quaintness prevailed. The people who attended there were of a mixed quality. On the little Duke of Gloucester’s birthday, Lord Lovat was to be seen bearing the sword of state before the king, to the Royal Chapel. On a levee day, the pushing, preaching, loyal, reverend Charles Lambe, with all the sermons he had preached against traitors, during the rebellion, printed in one volume, laid them at the king’s feet, kissed the king’s hand, and got nothing by his motion. On another levee day, Colley Cibber was at Court, holding daintily a printed copy of ‘The Nonjuror,’ opened at the dedication, which he presented, kneeling, to his Majesty, who gave him his hand to kiss, and promised him a ‘purse’ for his work. Colley got the purse with a couple of hundred guineas in it. On a drawing-room day, a stranger courtier stood in the royal presence, namely, a woman who had journeyed from Lanark, under the impulse of a ‘longing’ to kiss the royal hand. This inclination was gratified, and, imprudently, a gift was added of twenty guineas, to take the lady home again――a circumstance which greatly moved sundry other wives in the same direction. When the Rev. Mr. Peploe, of Preston, who had stuck to his Hanoverian principles, while the Jacobites lorded it, in that town, made his appearance at Court, Whig zeal described the king as waxing merry, not to say witty. His Majesty is reported to have remarked that, ‘_Peep low_ should look high.’ Loyal people laughed at the joke, but Mr. Peploe laughed with better reason, on being appointed Warden of Manchester College. He was afterwards made Bishop of Carlisle. On a later occasion, Colonel Oughton was to be seen, pulling a shy private of the 2nd Foot Guards, through the press, to the front of the throne, where the man was duly presented to his Majesty, with a copy of an ode which he had written on ‘Liberty.’ He was the first soldier who obtained preferment, not on professional, but on literary, grounds. [Sidenote: _A SCENE IN ‘BEDLAM.’_] After receptions like the above, the king usually honoured some Whig nobleman with his company, at dinner or supper――fearless, though the air was full of sinister reports. The Prince and Princess of Wales, on their parts, did not want for mirth. They went to see the mad folk in ‘Bedlam,’ and had especially good sport with a demented creature who thought herself a queen, and who solemnly married them to each other, amid royal bursts of questionable laughter.