Clive ended his brief but glorious career, slain by his own hand, in November 1774, but none the less murdered by the ingratitude of his country, a country so prolific in heroes that it can afford, for the sport of factions, to hound them occasionally to ruin and to death, coming afterwards in recriminating heart-agony to mourn their loss. Clive died, not yet fifty years of age, killed by constitutional melancholia, aggravated by disease and the yelpings of politicians, eager to drag down in the mire the man who gave us India. The arms of Clive still decorate the pediment of Claremont, the only house, so 'tis said, that "Capability" Brown ever built, though he altered many. [Sidenote: _PRINCESS CHARLOTTE_] In the forty years that succeeded between the death of Clive and the purchase of the estate by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, Claremont had a succession of owners; and upon the marriage of the Prince Regent's only daughter, the Princess Charlotte, in 1816, it was allotted to her for a residence. It was in May of that year that the Princess Charlotte of Wales was married to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, the petty German Duchy that has furnished princelings innumerable for the recruiting of kingdoms and principalities, and has given the Coburg Loaf its name. But within a year of her marriage the Princess died in child-birth, and was buried in a mausoleum within the park. Then Claremont was for long deserted. There is a much-engraved portrait of the Princess, painted by Chalon, R.A., which shows a pleasant-faced girl, with fine neck and full eyes,--the characteristic eyes of the Guelphs,--and a strong facial resemblance to her father and grandfather, the Third and Fourth Georges. She is represented as habited in the indecent dress of the period, with ermined robe, and wearing a velvet hat with an immense plume of ostrich feathers. But a much more pleasing portrait is that by an unnamed artist, "a Lady," reproduced here, which gives a representation of the Princess without those elaborate feathers and showy trappings of Court ceremonial. [Sidenote: _CHRONIQUES SCANDALEUSES_]