increased the scandal and redoubled the abuse on their nation. It was a greater triumph to the discontented, that the cause between Sir James Lowther and the Duke of Portland for Inglewood Forest being at last heard, the former was non-suited, his counsel, Sir Fletcher Norton, now Speaker, having forgotten, in drawing the grant, to insert a reserve of the third part of the rent to the Crown. But these were trifling consolations. The Court was predominant at home; Wilkes was fallen, the City was recovering from the dominion of the popular tribunes, the Rockingham party was crest-fallen, and now came news that Spain had actually restored to us the Falkland Islands, which it had been doubted she ever would surrender. Thus was the King at peace both at home and abroad, after a vexatious and ignominious struggle for near eleven years. It seemed an additional promise of tranquillity to him that his mother, who, by the bad education she had given him, and the bias which she impressed by her creatures on his counsels, was now known to be dying; and though she had lost much of her influence, she retained enough over his awe of her, to perplex his measures and throw uncertainty over the duration of his Ministries. At this very period such a storm of private calamities burst on his head as few kings ever experienced at once. Part of them touched his pride, and accordingly penetrated deep; he had a happy insensibility that surmounted the rest without an effort. The malignant humour in the blood of the Princess Dowager had fallen on her throat, and though her fortitude was invincible and her secrecy and reserve invariable, the disorder could no longer be concealed. She could swallow but with great difficulty, and not enough to maintain life long. At times her sufferings and her struggles to hide them were so much beyond her strength, that she frequently fainted, and was thought dead. Yet would she not allow she was ill, even to her children; nor would she suffer a single physician or surgeon to inspect her throat, trusting herself solely to a German page who had some medical knowledge: and going out to take the air, long after it was expected that she would die in her coach. Her danger was publicly known by the beginning of November, on the fifth of which month, when her death was hourly expected, an express arrived from Leghorn, that her son the Duke of Gloucester was at the point of death there, and it was concluded by that time dead. He had gone to a warmer climate in search of health, and having passed by sea from Genoa to Leghorn, had fallen into a diarrhœa, attended by every bad symptom.