270 



THE KING. 



In person the King is about the middle height. He can scarcely 

 be said to be corpulent, but his stoutness approaches to it. His 

 shoulders are rather high, and of unusual breadth. His neck 

 has consequently an appearance of being shorter than it is in 

 reality. He walks with a quick but short step. He is not a 

 good walker. I know of no plirase which could more strikingly 

 characterize his mode of walking than to say — " he waddles.'* 

 The latter is not a very classical terra, but in the present case it is 

 peculiarly expressive. His face is round and full. His complexion is 

 something between dark and sallow. What the colour of his hair is, 

 I cannot positively say, as on every occasion on which I have seen 

 him, he had either the crown or a hat on his head. As far as I could 

 form a judgment, it is of a light brown. His features are small, 

 and not very strongly marked, considering his advanced age. 

 His nose is short and broad, rather than otherwise. His forehead 

 is pretty ample both in breadth and height, but has a flatness 

 about it which deprives it of any intellectual expression. His 

 large, light-grey eyes are quick in their movements, and clear 

 and piercing in their glances. His countenance is highly indi- 

 cative of good nature blended with bluntness. You see nothing 

 either in his appearance or manners that would lead you to in- 

 fer that he was other than a plain country gentleman. That he 

 is good-hearted, and unaffectedly simple in his clemeanour, is a 

 fact of wliich you are convinced the very first glance you get of 

 him. The beadle of a parish, when clothed in his cloak of ofhce, 

 struts about at the church door with an air of immeasurably greater 

 sflf-impo-tance than N^N iljiam the Fourth exhibits when he meets 

 in state the Nobles and Commoners of the land. You cannot help 

 thinking that he wishes in his heart he could either dispense with 

 the prescriptive ceremonies he has to go through at the opening 

 and closing of each session, or that, in the overflowing kindness 

 of his soul, he forgets at the time he is the Sovereign of these realms. 

 His every look and movement furnish evidence not to be mista- 

 ken, of the man triumphing over the monarch. ' It is clearly with 

 diffieulty that, in the midst of tlie procession to the tlirone, he 

 restrains himself from suddenly stepping aside to shake hands 

 with every nobleman he sres around him. As it is — contrary 

 to the usual practice of kings on such occasions — he nods, and 

 evidently says in his own mind, " How do you do ? " to every 

 peer he passes. Of his extreme gooJ nature and simplicity of 



