speak the truth and my brothers don’t, and I find it a great defect, from which I would have my daughter free. _We have been brought up badly, the Queen having taught us to equivocate._” You may laugh at the picture of the little chubby, curly-heeded fellows learning to equivocate at their mother’s knee, but you must remember that the wisest master of ethics himself, in his theory of ἕξεις ἀποδείκτικαι, similarly raised virtues, such as telling the truth, to the level of regular accomplishments, and before you judge poor George harshly, in his entanglements of lying, remember the cruelly unwise education he had undergone. However much we may deplore this exaggerated tyranny, by reason of its evil effect upon his moral nature, we cannot but feel glad that it existed, to afford a piquant contrast to the life awaiting him. Had he passed through the callow dissipations of Eton and Oxford, like other young men of his age, he would assuredly have lacked much of that splendid pent vigour with which he rushed headlong into London life. He was so young and so handsome, and so strong, that can we wonder if all the women fell at his feet? “The graces of his person,” says one whom he honoured by an intrigue, “the irresistible sweetness of his smile, the tenderness of his melodious, yet manly voice, will be remembered by me till every vision of this changing scene are forgotten. The polished and fascinating ingenuousness of his manners contributed not a little to enliven our promenade. He sang with exquisite taste, and the tones of his voice, breaking on the silence of the night, have often appeared to my entranced senses like more than mortal melody.” But besides his graces of person, he had a most delightful wit, he was a scholar who could bandy quotations with Fox or Sheridan; and, like the young men of to-day, he knew all about Art. He spoke French, Italian, and German perfectly, and Crossdill had taught him the violoncello. At first, as was right for one of his age, he cared more for the pleasures of the table and of the ring, for cards and love. He was wont to go down to Ranelagh surrounded by a retinue of bruisers--rapscallions, such as used to follow Clodius through the streets of Rome, and he loved to join in the scuffles like any commoner. He learnt to box from Angelo, and was considered by some to be a fine performer. On one occasion, too, at an _exposition d’escrime_, he handled the foils against the _maître_, and “was highly complimented upon his graceful postures.” In fact, in spite of his accomplishments, he seems to have been a thoroughly manly young fellow. He was just the kind of figure-head Society had long been in need of. A certain lack of tone had crept into the amusements of the _haut monde_, and this was doubtless due to the lack of an acknowledged leader. The King was not yet mad, but he was always bucolic, and socially out of the question. So at the coming of his son Society broke into a gallop. Balls and masquerades