THE REGENCY 193 



came off victor, they are not for these pages. How 

 the combatants " fibbed " and " countered," and did 

 other things equally abstruse to the average reader, 

 you may, who care to, read in the pages of the 

 enthusiastic authorities upon the subject, who spare 

 nothing of all the blows given and received. 



This was fine company for the Heir-apparent to 

 keep at Crawley Downs ; but see how picturesque he 

 and the crowds that followed in his wake rendered 

 those times. What diversions went forward on the 

 roads — such roads as thev were ! One chronicler of 

 a fight here says, in all good faith, that on the morning 

 following the " battle," the remains of several carriages, 

 phaetons, and other vehicles were found bestrewing 

 the narrow ways where they had collided in the 

 darkness. 



The House of Hanover, which ended with the death 

 of Queen Victoria, was not at any time largely endowed 

 with picturesqueness, saving only in the gruesome 

 picture afforded by the horrid legend which accounts 

 for the family name of Guelph ; but the Regent was 

 the great exception. He, at least, was picturesque ; 

 and if there be any who choose to deny it, I will ask 

 them how it comes that so many novelists dealing 

 with historical periods have chosen the period of the 

 Regencv as so fruitful an era of romance ? The Prince 

 endowed his time with a glamour that has lasted, and 

 will continue unimpaired. It was he avIio gave a 

 devil-me-care connotation to the words " Regent " 

 and " Regency " ; and his wild escapades have 

 sufficed to redeem the Georgian Era from the reproach 

 of unrelieved dulness and greasy vulgarity. 



The reign of George the Third was the culmination 

 of smug and unctuous bourgeois respectability at Court, 

 from whose weary routine the Prince's surroundings 

 were entirely different. Himself and his entourage 

 were dissolute indeed, roystering, drinking, cursing, 

 dicing, visiting prize-fights on these Downs of Crawley, 

 and hail-fellow-well-met with the blackguards there 

 gathered together. But whatever his surroundings, 

 N 



