The Sun.
London, England, 1856-11-15 00:00:00

war, denied justice to the Roman Catholics, and on these
questions beat the patricians. He bribed and bulliefl,
and darkly dissembled upon. occasion—beat North and
Fox, and even bowed the stately neck of the younger
Pitt by his indomitable determination. In all this he was
perfectly honest; for it was by persons thoroughly believing
they were right thatnine,tenths of the tyranny of the world
had been perpetrated. Persecution of all kinds had always
been popular—in Algiers, in Spain, in Italy, as in Eng-
land. George 111. wished nothing but the good of his peo-
ple, and, as he declared to Lord Buto, he regarded all who
opposed him as the bad men and bad subjects.
Returning from an excursion amongst questions of policy
to the humbler court gossip, Mr. Thackeray, from Miss
Burney's description of her miserable life in the Queen's
household, portrayed the life at Kew and Windsor, the
little Queen surrounded by her stout sons and fair daugh-
ters, the household frugal and orderly, but the whole thing
stupid to a degree one shudders now to contemplate—a
quieter house or a more prosaic life could not be imagined.
But it was the fashion of the times, although there were
strange differencee between now and then. Peeping into a
qniet cottageat Olney, Mrs.l3-nwin and Lady Hesketh, two
high bred ladies, were seen sitting listening to the, gentle
Cowper reading to them the life of Jonathan Wild. The ad-
mirers of George the Third had filled volumes with stories
of his homely ways—riding about and talking with every
one he met about their crops, or their families, or the rents
of their houses. It was thus that our fathers liked their
old King, and magnified him as the great representative of
the regal character. Gilray represented him, like a King
of Brobdignag, holding a lilliputian Napoleon in the palm
of his hand, and surveying him through an opera-glass.
"I had once thought," said Mr. Thackeray, " of making a
collection of the lies that the French had invented against
us, and that we had published against them during the
war." The life of tke Princess Amelia, the darling of the
old King, her father, made a beautiful episode of the lea
sure, add the laist scene resedgfirhilatitilialVbrolxusest4r-ti
death. With her death reason deserted him, and from dee
10th of November, 1810, George the Third ceased to reign.
Mr. Thackeray concluded—History presents no sadder
picture than that old man, blind and deprived of reason,
wandering through his palace, haranguing imaginary
Parliaments, and reviewing ghostly troops. He became
utterly deaf too. All sight, all reason, all sound of human
voices, all the pleasures of this world, of God, were taken
from him. Some slight lucid moments he had, in one of
whichthe queen, desiring to see him, entered the room and
found him singing a hymn and accompanying himself on
the harpsichord ; when finished, he kneeled down and
prayed aloud for her and for his family, and then for the
nation, concluding with a prayer for himself that God
would avert his heavy calamity from him, but if not, that
He would give him resignation to submit to it. He then
burst into tears, and his reason again fled. What preacher
need moralise on this story ? What words, save the
simplest, are requisite to tell it? It is too terrible for
tears. The thought of such misery smites me down
in submission before the Ruler of kings and men,—
the Monarch supreme over empires and republics, the
inscrutable dispenser of life, death, happiness, victory.
Oh ! brothers, I said to those who heard me first in Anae-
! brothers, speaking the same dear mother
tongue—Oh ! comrades, enemies no more, let us take a
mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse,
and eall a truce to battle. Low he lies to whom the proud-
est used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the
poorest, whom millions prayed over in vaip. Driven off
his throne, buffetted by rude hands, with his children in
revolt, thedarling of his old age killed before him, old Lear
hangs over her breathless lips, and calls—Cordelia, Condo-
ne, stay a little.
Tex not his ghost, 0 let him pass, he hates him
That would upon the rack of this rough world
Stretch him out. longer.
Hush strife add quarrel over the solemn grave ! Sound
trumpets a mournful march! Fall dark curtain upon his
pageant, his pride, his griefs, his awful tragedy !