Although London Jacobitism was not wanting in malice and menace in this and the preceding year, the king and royal family maintained a dignified indifference. George I. was the most exposed to peril, but he met it like a man. He frequently went to the theatre, not in a bullet-proof carriage densely surrounded by cavalry, but in a sedan chair, some members of the Court being conveyed in similar vehicles. Such vehicles were easily assailed; an ‘ugly rush,’ pet phrase of the modern demagogue, might have overturned the king, and put him ‘out of the story,’ as the Sagas say, in a minute; but he encountered nothing worse than a distant word of chaff, which was perhaps not audible, or, if so, not understood. In this way, he was carried, in a November night, 1718, to see ‘The Orphan,’ unmolested; and he went in the same conveyance, and in equal comfort and security, in the same perilous month, to the ‘Little Theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields’, where he laughed over ‘Le Maître Etourdi,’ and fairly ‘roared’ at ‘Les Fourberies d’Arlequin,’ but he understood those farces better than he did Otway’s loftier tragedy. [Sidenote: _DANIEL DEFOE._] There remains to be noted a most remarkable illustration of these Jacobite times, in connection with the celebrated Daniel Defoe, the Ministry, and the London press. Five letters written by Defoe, in the first half of this year, were discovered in the State Paper Office, a few years ago. They are inserted, in ‘Notes and Queries, 3rd Series, vol. vi., p. 527-9.’ They are addressed to some official in the Secretary of State’s Office, for the information of his superiors. From these startling documents, sad truths are to be gathered. They make the strange revelation that the author of the ‘True-Born Englishman’ was in the secret service of the Government under whose resentment he was supposed to be suffering. He was giving information of ‘traitorous pamphlets’ to Lord Sunderland. By Lord Chief Justice Parker’s recommendation to Lord Townshend’s Ministry, Defoe had been employed on ‘a little piece of secret service,’ which won for him the subsequent favour of Lord Stanhope. Under Townshend, Defoe, the once ultra-Whig, appeared in the disguise of a Tory. He became chief proprietor of the ‘News Letter,’ a Jacobite paper very hostile to the Ministry. He took out all its sting, to the satisfaction of his secret employers, by writing mild Toryisms in it himself, and striking out all that was vigorous and damaging to ministers, in articles sent in by contributors. At a later period Lord Sunderland retained Defoe in the same questionable employment and rewarded him in the same manner as Lord Townshend had done. ‘With his Lordship’s approbation,’ says Defoe, ‘I introduced myself in the disguise of a translator of the “Foreign News,” to be so far concerned in this paper of _Mist’s_, as to be able to keep it within the circle of a secret management, also prevent the