“He was short, his joints were contracted, he stooped, looked down, squinted, was sometimes indifferent to things convenient for him, at others too warm and impetuous. His passions not restrained by reason; he had an obstinate aversion to sweetmeats; was disturbed by all sorts of noise; pain or pleasure made no lasting impressions on him; he was utterly unacquainted with good-breeding; had not the least idea of the mysteries of their holy religion; loved childish amusements, the most boisterous the best; and was continually shifting from one thing to another.” If these defects were disqualifications, hard would be the fate of most sovereigns! how seldom would an eldest son succeed his father! Would not one think that the faculty of physic at Naples had rather been describing a Monarch than dispossessing him? One thing is evident--it must have been a King who selected _such_ criterions for judging whether his son was capable of governing a great nation. “Ask him,” we must suppose, said his Neapolitan Majesty, “whether he loves sweetmeats! if he does not, he is unworthy of filling the Throne of his ancestors.” The Prince’s ignorance of good-breeding and of his religion seems rather imputable to his parents and preceptors than to him. If it were the mysteries of the Roman Catholic faith which he was incapable of comprehending, I should suspect the Prince was a sensible lad. Perhaps the honest physician thought as I do--at least, I do not doubt but, if permitted, he would have asked the Prince other questions. Voltaire, who, I do not know why, thinks Princes are always to be mentioned with strict decorum, could hardly persuade any man to refrain from laughing at this absurd catalogue of royal deficiencies. The Prince really was an idiot; nor was it likely that a father would wish to disinherit his own child, especially who was not old enough to have given him jealousy, unless the incapacity had been glaring and hopeless--but one would think the whole Cabinet of Naples had been idiots likewise, when they could find no better colours to dress up a notorious fact. Indeed, the Spanish as well as Portuguese statesmen have been wofully defective in composition in this age, as often as they have attempted to lay the grounds of their proceedings before the rest of Europe. The most barbarous periods of monkish ignorance and despotism produced nothing more despicable than several manifestos of those Crowns.