his countenance or his conversation, that everything was not as quiet as usual."

Meanwhile, although the king and Lord Bute had been estranged from each other for the last three years, the mob, no less than the great Whig lords, persisted, as usual, in regarding him as the secret adviser of his sovereign, and consequently as the author of their wrongs, whether real or imaginary. It was under this impression, that Lord Bute not only again found himself the object of the most virulent vituperations, but one of the most daring acts of the rioters, during the month of March, was a furious attack upon his house in South Audley Street. Yet, at the very time when he was thus suspected and dreaded, the fallen minister, mortified by neglect and abuse, was about to exile himself from his native country, sick in body and almost broken-hearted from a load of family afflictions. "I will apprise you," he writes to his friend, John Home, the author of Douglas," "how to direct to me, as I shall leave my name behind me for these vipers to spread their venom on. For, believe me, whatever advantage to my health this odious journey may be of, I know too well the turn of faction to suppose my absence is to diminish the violence I have for

'Even so well-informed a person as Lord Chesterfield writes, on the 30th of October, 1767, as follows: "Whatever places or preferments are disposed of come evidently from Lord Bute, who affects to be invisible, and who, like a woodcock, thinks that, if his head is but hid, he is not seen at all."

so many years experienced, a violence and abuse that no fear has made me too sensible to; and perhaps the more, that I may think I merit a distinguished treatment of a very opposite nature from a people I have served at the risk of my head. I have tried philosophy in vain, my dear Home; I cannot acquire callosity; and were it not for something still nearer to me - still more deeply interesting I would prefer common necessaries in Bute, France, Italy, nay, Holland, to fifty thousand pounds a year within the atmosphere of this vile place." Again, Lord Bute writes to Home from Venice, on the 5th of October, 1770: "Near three months of this envenomed sirocco has lain heavy on me, and I am grown such a stripling, or rather a withered old man, that I now appear thin in white clothes that I looked Herculean in when I was twenty. I hope I may get better, if permitted to enjoy that peace, that liberty, which is the birthright of the meanest Briton, but which has been long denied me." According to Walpole, Lord Bute at this time was "wandering about Italy incognito" under his family name and former family title, Sir John Stuart. In France, curiously enough, his loss of his sovereign's favour was no less persistently discredited than it was in England. During his stay at Barèges, whither he had gone to drink the mineral waters, the French court ordered him the same guard at his lodgings as if he had been a prince of the blood.

CHAPTER V.

Death of the King's Sister, Princess Louisa Anne-Birth of Princess Augusta — Christian VII. of Denmark, Brother-inlaw of the King, Visits England - Received with Coolness at Court, and Warmly by the People - Lord Chatham Recovers His Mental Faculties - Resigns Office- Is Succeeded as Premier by the Duke of Grafton - Lord Chatham Takes Part in the Debate on the Address — Resignation of Lord Chancellor Camden — Succeeded by the Honourable Charles Yorke - Distressing Death of the New Lord Chancellor.

On the 13th of May, 1768, death terminated the brief and blameless career of the king's third sister, the Princess Louisa Anne. Afflicted with bodily disease from her infancy, she was also so diminutive in stature that, though she had completed her nineteenth year, she presented the appearance of a sickly child of thirteen or fourteen. Fortunately an ardent love of literature had rendered her existence an endurable, if not a happy one; while her singular sweetness of disposition endeared her to all who were either witnesses of her sufferings, or whom she honoured with her regard. For some months previously to her decease she had been afflicted with a troublesome cough, which was followed by a rapid consumption that hurried her to the grave.

This event was succeeded, on the eighth of November following, by the birth of the king's second daughter, the Princess Augusta. The queen's lying-in took place at Buckingham House, where, with the exception of George the Fourth, she gave birth to all her numerous offspring.

In the meantime, the monotony of the court had been interrupted by the arrival in England of the most frivolous of modern European sovereigns, Christian the Seventh, King of Denmark, who, two years previously, had married Caroline Matilda, the youngest sister of George the Third; the former then in his nineteenth, and the latter in her sixteenth year. The melancholy story of this ill-fated princess belongs to a later period of our annals. At present it is sufficient to mention that their nuptials had conduced to the happiness of neither. Even at this early period of their union, we find the Danish monarch embittering the existence of his consort by his ill treatment of her, while the queen, on her part, is said to have spoken and written of her husband in terms of unequivocal contempt.

The visit of Christian to England, owing to his coarse profligacy, his brutal conduct to his wife, and partly on account of the bustle and parade which his sojourn was sure to occasion at St. James's, was very far from affording pleasure to George the Third.

The King to Viscount Weymouth.

"RICHMOND LODGE, June 8, 1768, m p' 6 P. M. "LORD WEYMOUTH: As to-morrow is the day

you receive foreign ministers, you will acquaint M. de Dieden that I desire he will assure the king, his master, that I am desirous of making his stay in this country as agreeable as possible. That I therefore wish to be thoroughly apprised of the mode in which he chooses to be treated, that I may exactly conform to it. This will throw whatever may displease the King of Denmark, during his stay here, on his shoulders, and consequently free me from that désagrément; but you know very well that the whole of it is very disagreeable to me."

In pursuance of the intentions expressed in this note, apartments in St. James's Palace were set apart for the use of the Danish king; gold plate, which was rarely used except at coronations, was brought from the Tower to decorate his sideboard; and lastly, so hospitable a table was kept for him as to have cost his brother monarch £84 a day, exclusive of the expense of wine. Yet, if Walpole is to be believed, so marked was the neglect, if not contempt, manifested by the one king for the other, that when the "royal Dane" arrived at St. James's it was in a hired carriage. No military escort, according to Walpole, was appointed to meet him on the road; not even a lord of the