The Sun.
London, England, 1856-11-18 00:00:00

SHREWSBURY RACES.—(This Day.)

Weights for the Shorts

:andicap. Six furlongs.

~tp 1/
Octavia
Usurer 7 10
Maid of Cadiz 7 7
Jane Shore
Bold Buccleuch
lda 6 9

Chatteress
6 0
Hornceopathist
White Bait 5 9
Rickledon
Springy John 5 3
Kertch Chief

PLATE.

Laverne
Bold Buccleugh

Fuu;

ran.

LATEST BETTING ON THE COURSE,
SHRE WSBURY HANDICAP.
sto 2 aget Lord Alfred (taken)
5 to 2 agst Maid of Derwent (taken)
6to 1 bar two (offered)

TATTERSALL'S.—MONBAY.
The room was very thinly attended, and the following
scanty list of quotations comprises all the bets laid :

SHREWSBURY HANDICAP.
sto 2 agst Maid ofDerwent (taken and offered,
4to 1 agst Lord Alfred (taken)
sto 1 agst Homily (taken and offered)
CHESTER CUP.
60 to 1 agst Arsenal (taken)

DERBY.
33 to 1 agst Arsenal (taken)
33 to 1 agst Ack worth (taken)
60 to 1 agBt Messenger (taken)

LAW INTELLIGENCE.—(This Day.

COURT OF BANKRUPTCY.
(Before Mr. Commissioner Fonblanque.)

IN RE POILE.

This bankrupt, Sophia Anne Poile, bad carried on
business as a pawnbroker in Great Suffolk-street, South-
wark, and now come up for her certificate.
_ _

Mr. Bagley, instructed by Mr. Rolt, appeared to
oppose, on the ground that the bankrupt had given an
undue preference to her mother, by which all the pro-
perty bad been swept off.

Mr. Lawrance appeared for the bankrupt, and after a
brief explanation,
His Honour granted an immediate certificate of the
second class.

NVENING, NOVEMBFfAt, 18 1856

MR. TII4CKER.ArS FOURTH LECTURE,

(From the Scotsman.)

Last night (Friday) Mr. Thackeray's concluding
lecture—on the Fourth of the Georges—was de-
livered in the Music Hall, Edinburgh, to an audi-
ence that appeared even greater than those which
had attended the preceding lectures.
The lecturer began with a reference to the vene-
ration with which Lord Eldon preserved a lock of
the Duke of York's hair, and to the unfortunate
accident which befel a greater man than George
the Fourth—Sir Walter Scott—when he went on
board the vessel that brought the King to Scotland
in 1822, and carried off iu his pocket a crystal
goblet from which his Majesty had drunk, break-
ing it, however, by sitting down upon it in the
boat as ho was coming ashore—as instancing the
extraordinary reverence that was paid to royalty,
and especially to George the Fourth, even within
the memory of the present generation. Had the
precious crystal been preserved, and were it now
shown to the visitors at Abbotsford, would we not
smile with something like pity to see it? In Ma-
dame Tussaud's wax-work exhibition the corona-
tion robes of that king are yet to be seen—" Which
of you would now kiss the hem of that trumpery ?"
To make a portrait of him at first seemed a matter
of some difficulty. There is his coat, and his wig,
and his countenance simpering under it. With a
slate and a piece of chalk, said Mr. Thackeray, I
could at this very desk perform a recognisable like-
ness of him. And yet, after reading of him in
scores of volumes, hunting him through old maga-
zines and newspapers, you will find nothing but a
coat and wig, and the mask smiling below it_._.
nothing but a great simulacrum. His sires" and
grandsires were men with individualities ; they had
steady loves and hatreds ; one knew what they
would do undergivencircumstances. Thesailor-king
who succeeded him was a man ; and the Duke of
York, his brother, was a man—a big, burly, jolly,
a cursin, courageous man. But this Gorge was but a
bow and' a grin ; he was all outside, a tailor's work—
fine cocked hat, nutty-brown wig, coat, huge black
stock, under-waistcoats, more under-waistcoats, and
then nothing—a royal mummy. The lecturer said
he had once thought it would be flood sport to hunt
him down, but he would be ashamed to summon a
full field and then hunt such poor game. There
were more pictures taken of him than of any other
human being—in every variety of uniform and
dress, in every conceivable cocked hat, in dragoon
uniform, in Windsor uniform, in field-marshal's
dress, in a Scotch kilt, with dirk and claymore—
and then he looked more stupendous than over.
Before his little feet could walk statesmen were
busy kissing them. He was everywhere described
as beautiful, and he had a high spirit when a boy.
Having a difference with his father, he burst into
the royal closet and shouted "Wilkes and
Liberty ! ' He corrected his tutor, Lord Bruce,
who made a false quantity in reading his Greek
lesson;
hisand the tutor took it so to heart that he
resigned
post, obtaining a peerage, however, to
soothe his wounded feelings. Lord Bruce was
made an earl for a blunder in prosody, and Nelson
was made a baron for the victory of the Nile. He
was so extravagant that if he had been a manufac-
turing town, or a populous rural district, or an
army of 5,000 men, he could not have cost more ;
and yet he was a solitary man, who did not toil, or
spin, or fight. He spent 10,0001. a year for the
coats on his back ; and the sums given him by the
nation were past counting. He spent an income of
66,0001., 70,0001., 100,0001., 120,0001. a year—the
nation was continually paying debts for him of
180,0001. or 65D,000/.—besides granting mysterious
foreign loans, the proceeds of which this man
pocketed. He was so lovely to look upon that he
was described as Prince Florizel. He and his
brother King, Louis D'Artois—who subsequently,
driven away by his people, had to seek shelter
in Holyrood—shared between them the title
of " The First Gentleman of Europe." It
was, of course, a point of loyality to ac-
cord the title to George in this country. It
was Walter Scott who was his champion—who
rallied all Scotland to him, laying about him with
his claymore on all his enemies. The House of
lirmiswick had no such two defenders as Samuel
J'ohnson and Walter Scott. The dreadful dulness
of papa's court at Windsor, however, was such as
would have made scapegoats of any princes. But
his brothers, after sowing their wild oats and.
spending their youth in riotous living, settled
down into quiet, if not good, men. But throughout
Prince Florizel was the same. He signalised hie
entrance into life by an act worthy of him—he in-
vented a new shoe-buckle, an inch long and five
inches broad, which covered almost the whole in-
step, and reached down to the ground on either
side—a sweet invention, lovely and useful as the
prince on whose foot it sparkled. His natural com-
panions were dandies and parasites. French ballet
dances, French cooks, horse-jockeys, boxers, china,
jewel, and gimcrack merchants. lox, and Pitt,
and Burke, and Sheridan were sometimes his
guests, but what bad they in common with their
host of Carlton House ? His opinions on anything
but the best pattern for a waistcoat or the sauce
for a partridge were not worth anything. The
Whig chiefs thought to make use.of him, but he
had no feeling to unite him to them or to any
others who took part in the business of the world,
and if he broke the hollow compact that subsisted
with them, who shall blame him a Declining to
take the Leporello part, and flourish a catalogue
of the conquests of this royal Don Juan, and to
tell the names of the favourites to whom, one after
another, the Prince threw his pocket-handkerchief
—what good is there, said Mr. Thackeray, in know-
ing that he actually did marry Miss Fitzherbert
according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church?
Heartless debauchees hal • been ever since the world
began, and this one had more than his share of
temptation. All the pleasant devils were enticing
him on—desire, idleness, vanity, and drunkenness.
At his table—for the aroma of the wine at a table
where agreat man sits as host seems to brighten the
wit—Scott, with his great and good nature, poured
forth his immense stores of legendary lore, and there
was Grattan with his Weadreus eloquence and
feeling, Tom Mo an, too, perched on it for a while,
flying away in a twitter of indignation afterwards,
and attacking the Prince with beak and claws.
Kindness to a housemaid, generosity to a groG.m,
were the sum of all the good stories that were told
about him ; they were mean and trivial, and they
characterised him. H was fond and familiar with
his friends one day, aid passed them without re-
cognition the next ; on Monday Prince Flerizel
fondled and kissed poor Perdita, and on Tuesday
he did not know her. Beau Brommell, his superior
in his own line, he treated with cruel neglect, after
cheating him out of a snuff-box. He had wonn
uniforms so much—bad sat so often in all kinds of
cocked hats and military coats to have his portrait
taken—that he came to belie's' he had been a sol-
dier, and had actually led a tremendous charge of
the German Legion at Waterloo.
Mr. Thackeray next sketched the greatly differ-
ent manners of fifty years age—the drinking, box-
ing, swearing, and gambling habits of the last
generation—when gentlemen at dinner regularly
tell under the table—when Byron and his com-
panions led their wild life at Newstead Abbey,
drinking till morning in monks' dresses, breakfast-
ing at two or three o'clock in the afternoon, and
then boxing, or fencing, or firing pistols at a mark
in the hall, or worrying the wolf. Lori Eldon, as
John Scott, a young barrister on the Northern
Circuit, who loved port wine, but loved also his
business, his duty and his keg, was called up, as
evidence against the leading counsel,
who lostcauses from sticking to the dinner table, and being
too drunk to consult. Poor Bozzy, who absurdly
would go to the Northern Circuit, was exposed
lying drunk in the streets of Lancaster unable to
move. A story was related of the Prince Regent
and his brothers the Dukes of York and Clarence,
getting "Jockey of Norfolk" over to the Pavilion at
Brighton to dinner in order to carry out a plan they •
had laid for making him drunk, and how, after
the veteran toper had overthrown many of those
who were in the plot against him, he was
finished by the Prince proposing a bumper of
brandy ; and when the old grey-haired man, drunk
as he was, seeing through theacheme, and proposing
to leave, getting his postilions to drive him round
and round the park, and finally landing him in bed
at the Pavilion. These were the manners of the
times, and this was the First Gentleman of Europe.
Mr. Thackeray said he believed, however, that lie
was innocent in the affair about his horse Escape,
which created so much talk. Pierce Eaan then
narrated in most amusing style the battles of Moly-
ieux and Cribb—Byron swore in his letters to John
Murray, and corresponded with Mr. John Jackson,
pugilist—and Blackwood raisedandttoheexntaitniognuisrhouinndniKaninaglove ofR •
his voice to gather
mg declaring that
ofpugilism' would be
to reduce him to the level
the brutes, and pro-
cleiming, " Let
pugilism flourish and Radicalism
de( say. Play, too, which ruined so many of the
mein of fashion, was now a deposed goddess, her
woirshippers bankrupt, and her table in rags.
Di 'lying was the only thing in which the Prince
d tinguished himself, and that, too, had fallen
into. decay.
keorge had not even the constitutional bravery
of h
us predecessors. The Second George manfully
fire('
1. his pistols in the enemy's face at Dettingen,
and the Third withstood all the statesmen of his
time on the India Bill and the Roman Catholic
Disabilities, declaring that if he were beaten he
won] d retire to Hanover rather than renounce his
King ;ly prerogative. And he he would have done
it to 3 ! But bravery, how could George the Fourth
have it, who had lived his life in wanton idleness,
bad sever strung up hie porno to arty work