* He died at Bath, in 1785, a Lieutenant-General, and still Colonel of the Scots Greys.--_Regimental Record_, p. 127. CHAPTER XIX. IN LONDON AGAIN, Before I reached England, some changes had taken place of which we had as yet heard nothing in our camps and cantonments in Germany. The king had died in October; his grandson had been proclaimed by the title of George III., and already the Court was out of mourning, for the new monarch had succeeded a father who had been hated by the late king, and whom _he_ was never known to name or to speak of during the whole of his long life; no one knows _why_, but so it is, that the memory of Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, was speedily committed to oblivion. After a narrow escape from a French privateer, I was landed by a returned transport at Portsmouth, and travelled post to the English metropolis, halting for a night at the Red Lion at Guildford, where the landlord perfectly remembered the affair of the highwayman in the chimney, and insisted on my sharing with him a crown bowl of punch in the good old fashion, while I fought all my battles over again. Next evening, without encountering a breakdown of the ricketty vehicle, an overturn on the wretched roads, a masked highwayman, or other adventure, I saw before me mighty London, with the double domes and peristyles of Greenwich shining in the sun, and the old battered fellows who had fought under Anson, Hawke, and Boscawen enjoying their pipes on the terrace; then the glorious Thames, with its myriad shipping, and the flags of all the world (France excepted) flying over them; the vast façade of St. Paul's--the great square mass of the Tower, which made me think of the jewels, the crown, the chains and dungeons of tyrants long since gone to their account, and of that long line of Norman and English kings whom we may still see there, with their wax faces and dusty armour, ranged rank and file in the Armoury. Anon I was amid the roar and bustle of Fleet-street and the Strand, and had passed under Temple Bar, whereon were still, white, bleached, and bare, the skulls of those who perished for principle and their king, though the brothers of some of them led the ranks of our Scottish corps at Minden. I put up at the King George in Pall Mall, where, for the first night for many, many months, I could take mine ease in mine inn, and where from the windows I could see the flaring links and flambeaux, the sedans and coaches, of those who were proceeding to the theatres, opera, balls, or elsewhere. I thought of the time when I had been last in London, under such different circumstances--when I had come with the despatch concerning the French spies--I, a simple orderly dragoon--concerning that wretch Hautois, before we sailed from Portsmouth for Brittany, and ages seemed to have elapsed since then. After all I had seen of war, I agreed to the full with my Lord Clarendon, in all his views and remarks on the virtues and blessings of peace.