14 KEW GARDENS 



end. Horace Walpole sneers at Frederick's 

 desire to name his children from heroes of 

 English history, not always with his father's 

 approval ; but this trait goes to show the Prince's 

 aspirations to be a patriotic king. He is said to 

 have taken the " Black Prince " as a model he 

 got no chance of following, perhaps as well for 

 his possible subjects ; but the scanty records of 

 his career suggest rather one of Browning's 

 characters : 



All that the old Dukes were without knowing it, 

 This Duke would fain know he was without being it. 



During the married life of Frederick and 

 Augusta, the memoirs of the time give slight 

 and sometimes rather spiteful hints of their 

 doings at Kew, as to which, indeed, Lord 

 Hervey's caustic pen has no worse to tell than 

 that they walked three or four hours daily in the 

 lanes and fields about Richmond, with a scandal- 

 blown lady-in-waiting and a dancing-master for 

 company. The Prince was much given to 

 private theatricals, but also to athletic games, 

 among them such innocent ones as rounders, 

 tennis, and base-ball, the last not yet banished 

 across the Atlantic. The dog given to him by 



