The Sun.
London, England, 1857-01-21 00:00:00

MR. THACKERAY'S LECTURES.

If Mr. Thackeray treated the memory of Gs:or:go
111. with more lenity than might have been anti-
cipated by all his hearers, he certainly made amends
for the unexpected clemency by the discourse which
he delivered last night on the subject of George IV.
In surveying the career of the so-called " first
gentleman of Europe," the lecturer professed his
inability to discover any single cause for respect,
or any claim to the title once bestowed by the
population of this kingdom. He could not even
regard the last of the Georges as a " man" in any
sense. He could find a coat, a waistcoat, and divers
well-made articles of clothing, but behind these
habiliments there was literally—nothing. When
the Prince came into the world on the 12th Aug.,
1762, he was received with every testimonial of
idolatry, and the spirit of adulation pursued him
to the end of his career. The beauty of his face
was patent to all eyes, his proficiency in every spe-
cies of accomplishment was everywhere extolled ;
even his supremacy as a classical scholar was loudly
proclaimed. No individual had ever been portrayed
in such a variety of costumes—in short, there was
scarcely a sort of dress in which he was not exhi-
bited. A populous district or an army was not a
more expensive article to maintain than this superb
Prince of Wales, who was always taking money
from the nation, and always flinging it away.
As the child is father to the man, so did George
IT., in Mr. Thackeray's opinion, give earnest of his
future eminence by the invention of a peculiarly
large and inconvenient shoe-buckle. As for his
friendships and his amours, they merely bore wit-
ness to the fickleness and frivolity of his character.
The only associates after his own heart were para-
sites and persons engaged in the most ignoble pur-
suits ; and though Fox, Pitt, and Sheridan sat at
his table in his earlier days, his intimacy with those
great men was but the freak of a moment, and
they must have felt in his presence they were only
associating with a person in every respect their in-
ferior. However, good and bad, friends and mis-
tresses, all were dropped in turn, and the favourite
of the day was forgotten on the morrow.
The reputed kindness of George IV. to the ser-
vants of his household Mr. Thackeray willingly
conceded, with the remark that this one small
virtue comprised all his goodness, and that it was
counterbalanced by his heartless conduct to Brum-
mel, when that unlucky beau—the Prince's superior
—fell from his fashionable eminence.

The old story that Mr. Etliston, when he repre-
sented George IV. at the mimic coronation enacted
at Drury-lane, actually took himself for the
monarch whose rank he assumed, was told by Mr.
Thackeray with the supplementary comment, that
the belief of the real personage that be had any-
thing to do with the glorious deeds performed
during his Regency was equally absurd. He
might indeed have been possessed of the bravery
inherent in the House of Brunswick and displayed
in such an eminent degree by his predecessors, but
the fact could never be proved by a being who
passed his existence wrapped up in swaddling-
clothes, and his weeping interviews with his Mi-
nisters on the subject of the Catholic Emancipation
Bill contrasted unfavourably with the manly re-
sistance of his father on a similar occasion.

Mr. Thackerary did not omit ... ............
for reflecting on the great change in manners and
morals that has taken place since the decease of
George IV. Many a man now old had indulged
during youth in the vices of gaming, drinking, and
swearing to a degree that would now create amaze-
ment, and the decline of the "ring" was one of
the changes that show the improvement of the age
within the last 25 years. The farmer prevalence
of vices now obsolete was illustrated by several
amusing anecdotes.

Utterly denying the claim of George IV. to be
termed the "first gentleman of Europe" Mr.
Thackeray devoted the latter part of his lecture to
a comment on a few personages who might be
regarded as the real gentlemen of the period.
These were Sir Walter Scott, Robert Southey,
Bishop Heber, and Lord Collingwood, whose moral
virtues he extolled in connection with their intel-
lectual greatness. As a final contrast he drew a CJlll-
parison between the first party given by the Prince
in London—described by the magazines of that day
as the ne plus ultra of magnificence—with a cere-
mony that took place in the same year, namely, the
retirement of Washington from public life iu the
presence of the United States' Congress. A com-
pliment to the present sovereign, as possessed of
the virtues in which George IV. was so lamentably
deficient, concluded the discourse, and Mr. Thacke-
ray retired amid loud acclamations.
The lecture, of which we have briefly stated the
purport, was the last of the series, but so great has
been the attraction of the course that it was com-
menced de novo on Saturday, the 10th inst., and
the Saturdays intended for a separate body of
subscribers are not yet terminated. The
room has been invariably crowded to repletion,
and a passenger in Edward-street, seeing the
throngs that have emerged from the doors of the
Marylebone Institution, would scarcely have be-
lieved that a lecture was the cause of an excitement
so extraordinary. The merit of being the first to
make an un-illustrated lecture a cause of " crush"
is entirely due to Mr. Thackeray.
While on the subject of the Marylebone Institu-
tion, we may state that the Monday evenings are
devoted to the dramatic readings of Miss Glyn,
whose series commenced on the 19th instant with
"Antony and Cleopatra." Those yet to come will
comprise the " Merchant of Venice," " Romeo and
Juliet," and " Othello."