Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/295

240 discharged the debt. After which rightly judging that the properest course, if he would extend his benevolence, was to employ the artist professionally, he set him to take a portrait of his Princess—a fact directly at variance with the general, if not the universal belief, that mutual disgust, and a separation from bed and board took place almost immediately after their nuptials.—If so, that the bridegroom shortly after should have employed an artist to take the likeness of his partner, cannot be reconciled to—is indeed quite incompatible with ordinary notions in such concerns, for no man separated from his wife under such circumstances ever thinks of introducing a painter with such an object. How can he be supposed to contemplate the production of art with pleasure, if the original, from whatever causes is wholly an alien to his satisfaction? How, we ask, is a difficulty to be got over, directly opposed to historical credence? for it leads