REMINISCENCES 55 



have your Majesty's two legs for your three kmg- 

 doms.' He tells the friend that the King procured a 

 more courtly and less blunt medical adviser ; and we 

 can well believe it. More stories beguile the way : 

 how Queen Anne and Prince George of Denmark 

 ended here in the fulness of time ; how their suc- 

 cessor, George the First, furious with Sir Robert 

 Walpole, with his queen, with the servants, and 

 anything and everything, used to tear off his wig 

 and jump on it, in transports of rage. How he 

 would gaze up at the vane on the clock -tower 

 entrance to the palace (which we can just glimpse 

 as we pass), anxious for favouring winds to waft 

 his ships to England with despatches from his 

 beloved Hanover, and how he died suddenly at 

 breakfast one morning after being disappointed in 

 those breezes. 



These are hearsay stories. Our friend, however, 

 has reminiscences of his own, and can recollect the 

 Princess Caroline, the eccentric wife of the Prince 

 Regent, living at the palace between the years 1810 

 and 1814 — ' a red-faced huzzy, sir, with yellow towzled 

 hair, all spangles and scarlet cloak, like a play-actress, 

 making Haroun-al-Raschid visits among the people, 

 and botherino- the house-ag;ents in the neis^hbourhood 

 for houses to let.' The old gentleman wdio says this 

 is a Radical, and, like all of that political creed, likes 

 to see Royalty ' behaving as sich, and not like common 

 people such as you an' me.' Whereupon another 

 passenger in the stage, on whom the speaker's eye 

 has fallen, audibly objects to being called, or thought, 

 or included among common persons ; so that relations 



