Page:The Carcanet.djvu/98



Mr. Burke speaking of the number of his Majesty's inferior titles remarked :

" The monarchy is divided into five several distinct principalities beside the supreme. As in the itinerant exhibitions of the stage, they are obliged to throw a variety of parts on their chief performer, so our sovereign condescends to act not only the principal, but subordinate parts. Cross a brook, and you lose the King of England, but you have some comfort in coming again under his majesty, though shorn of his beams and no more than Prince of Wales. Go to the north and you find him dwindled to a Duke of Lancaster; turn to the west of that north, and he pops upon you in the humble character of Earl of Chester. Travel a few miles on, the Earl of Chester disappears, and the king surprises you again as Count Palatine of Lancaster. You find him once more in his incognito and he is Duke of Cornwall. So that quite fatigued and satiated with this dull variety, you are infinitely refreshed when you return to the sphere of his proper splendour, and behold your amiable sovereign in his true, simple, undisguised, native character of Majesty.