Here again the gewgaw of royal parade was intended to entrap the admiration of the ignorant. The vain pomp and pageantries of courts and the splendour of fortune have ever been an _ignis fatuus_ to seduce the people to their ruin. They have, alas! too often served as an useful shelter to every excess of folly, every enormity of crime; while the deepest distresses and the most urgent wants have not been allowed as an extenuation for the slightest transgression, though committed to satisfy the craving exigencies of famished nature! Had a _private_ individual acted as this prince was about to do, would he not have become an outcast from his family, and would not the whole world have abandoned him? Yet, although the prince's example was ten thousand times more contagious, all the breaches of faith of which he had been guilty scarcely received the slightest animadversion! But so it was; common interest united even those who were disunited by particular discordances, and the _seeming_ harmony of the royal family may undoubtedly be inferred to have arisen from their equal interest in the success of the piece. Their private differences were apparently lost in the immensity of the SECRETS by which the state chain was rivetted, as if it were by adamant. We must not suppose his majesty was all this time ignorant of the situation of his nephew, the only child of his brother Edward; so far from that being the case, he had caused him to be brought up privately, and was regular in the discharge of the yearly expenses incurred on his account at Eton. The queen presumed that her children were safely seated, so long as the king's _first_ marriage should be concealed, and therefore did not bestow many thoughts upon the happiness or misery, fortune or misfortune, life or death, of this MUCH-INJURED YOUTH! Does not nature revolt at this barbarity, this secret unfeeling conduct of the queen? What mother could know a similar case, and not afford all the generous tenderness of sympathy to mitigate the losses this _orphan_ had sustained, not only of fortune, but of the fostering care of both his parents? The complicated wickedness of the court seemed now nearly approaching its climax. Deception had been added to deception, until, to complete the delusion, another victim must necessarily be added, in the person of the Princess Caroline of Brunswick! After conferences with Mrs. Fitzherbert, the queen, and a few others, closely interested in the affair, had taken place, the prince acquainted his father with his submission to the royal will, and requested to know whom his majesty would recommend for his bride. The king suggested his niece, the daughter of his sister, the Duchess of Brunswick, for whose acceptance he urged the prince to send his miniature, and other formalities, usual on such occasions. _The prince, with apparent vivacity, acquiesced_; but his majesty thought that his son's language wanted sincerity.