162 THE PRINCESS OF WALES [1813. 



be the sovereign of this great country, enjoys none of 

 those advantages of society which are deemed necessary 

 for imparting a knowledge of mankind to persons who 

 have infinitely less occasion to learn that important 

 lesson ; and it may so happen, by a chance which I 

 trust is very remote, that she should be called upon to 

 exercise the powers of the crown with an experience 

 of the world more confined than that of the most 

 private individual. To the extraordinary talents with 

 which she is blessed, and which accompany a disposi- 

 tion as singularly amiable, frank, and decided, I will- 

 ingly trust much ; but beyond a certain point the 

 greatest natural endowments cannot struggle against 

 the disadvantages of circumstances and situation. 



" It is my earnest prayer, for her own sake as well 

 as for her country's, that your Royal Highness may be 

 induced to pause before this point be reached. 



" Those who have advised you, Sir, to delay so long 

 the period of my daughter's commencing her inter- 

 course with the world, and for that purpose to make 

 Windsor her residence, appear not to have regarded 

 the interruptions to her education which this arrange- 

 ment occasions, both by the impossibility of obtaining 

 proper teachers, and the time unavoidably consumed 

 in the frequent journeys to town which she must make, 

 unless she has to be secluded from all intercourse, even 

 with your Royal Highness and the rest of the royal 

 family. To the same unfortunate counsel I ascribe a 

 circumstance in every way so distressing, both to my 

 parental and religious feelings, that my daughter has 

 never yet enjoyed the benefit of confirmation, although 

 above a year older than the age at which all the other 

 branches of the royal family have partaken of that 



