Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/425

A.D. 1727.] of her existence, in the very act of receiving the holy sacrament, her innocence, and who was credited by all those who had the best means of knowing, whilst he allowed his fat and lean German mistresses to flaunt before the English public, to plunder his people, and corrupt his administration, did much towards degrading public morals. They were not the merits of George I., but the necessity of maintaining the protestant succession, which made this dull, heavy, cold-hearted foreigner tolerable to the English people.

was born in 1683, and was, consequently, in his forty-fourth year when he ascended the throne. In 1705 he married the princess Caroline Wilhelmina, of Anspach, who was born in the same year as himself, by whom he had now four children—Frederick, prince of Wales, born in 1707, and William, duke of Cumberland, born in 1721.

George had, if either, a narrower intellect than his father, but could speak English fluently, though with a foreign accent—a great advantage over his predecessor. He was small of stature, and subject to fits of violent passion, neither of which qualities were conducive to royal dignity. Nor did the qualities of his mind supply any advantages calculated to remedy these defects. He was possessed of courage, which he had proved at the battle of Oudenarde, and did again at Dettingen; and he was praised for justice, which his first act, the suppression of his father's will, did not by any means demonstrate. In filial virtue we have seen that he was totally deficient, and this want was exhibited towards himself in his son, the prince of Wales, who scandalised the nation on his arrival by the same hostility to his father as George had exhibited towards George I. Perhaps it was a love of order and etiquette rather than justice which distinguished the present monarch. For his sort of military precision and love of soldiers he was nicknamed "the little captain" by the Jacobites. But the vilest trait of his disposition was his avarice, which was the more odious in a monarch who had everything liberally provided for him by the nation. He was said to have had his purse continually in his hands, not for the purpose of benevolent distribution, but for the mere love of his coin; and one of his bed-chamber women, to whom he was making love, after seeing him count over his money many times, exclaimed, "Sir, I can bear it no longer; if you count your money once more, I will leave the room." He admitted, says lord Chesterfield, that he was much more affected by little things than great ones—the certain mark of a little mind; he therefore troubled himself very little about religion, but took it as he found it, without doubt, objection, or inquiry. He hated and despised all literature and intellectual pursuit, arts and sciences, and the professors of them; and was such a mere mechanical plodder, that lord Hervey observes that "he seems to think having done a thing to-day an unanswerable reason for doing it to-morrow." Like his father, he had his mistresses; but they were some of them English and good-looking; and his best merits were that he was a good man of business, and contented to leave alone the liberties of the nation so long as he could enjoy his mistresses, his money, and his trips to Hanover.

As for the queen, she was a far superior person. She had been well brought up on the second marriage of her mother after the death of her father, by the queen of Prussia, Sophia Charlotte, the sister of George I. She had been handsome till she grew corpulent and suffered from the small-pox; and still she was much admired for her very impressive countenance, her fine voice, penetrating eye, and the grace and sweetness of her manner. She was still more admired for the striking contrast which she presented to her husband in her love of literature and literary men, extending her interest and inquiries into philosophy, theology, and metaphysics. Those who are inclined to ridicule her pretence to such knowledge admit that she was equally distinguished by prudence and good sense. She combined in her manners royal dignity and unassuming grace, and was more popular with the nation than any one of the Hanover family had ever yet been. "Her leveés" says archdeacon Coxe, "were a strange picture of the motley character and manners of a queen and a learned woman. She received company whilst she was at her toilet; prayers, and sometimes a sermon were read; learned men and divines were intermixed with courtiers and ladies of the household; the conversation turned on metaphysical subjects, blended with repartees, sallies of mirth, and the tittle-tattle of a drawing-room." Lord Mahon adds that "on the table, perhaps, lay heaped together the newest ode by Stephen Duck upon her beauty, her last letter from Leibnitz upon Free Will, and the most high-wrought panegyric of Dr. Clarke on her 'inimitable sweetness of temper,' 'impartial love of truth,' and 'very particular and uncommon degree of knowledge, even on matters of the most abstract speculation.'" She delighted to engage theologians in discussing knotty points of doctrine, and in perplexing them with questions on the various articles of faith in different churches, and corresponded with them on these subjects through her bed-chamber woman, Mrs. Clayton, afterwards lady Sundon.

In fact, allowing for the tendency of men to satires a woman's taste in such things, Caroline seems to have desired to introduce a more elevated and intellectual tone into the English court; to make it more what it had been under the Tudors in this respect, and what it has never succeeded in being under the Hanoverian dynasty, even down to our own