and convulsed assembly, and anxious only to prevent the Queen from being alarmed. This personal courage was the inalienable inheritance of the house of Brunswick, which is distinguished for a constitutional fearlessness of danger: the kind and generous affection with which it was united was his Majesty's own.

We have spoken of our lamented sovereign as a man; it remains to speak of him as a king.

We do not at present pretend either to question or to defend the principles on which his foreign and domestic policy were conducted, further than in illustration of his personal character. In both the great and predominant events of his reign, he was guided by a sense of justice and of duty. In the American, and afterwards in the Revolutionary war, he was actuated by no pique against his neighbour, nor by any ambitious wish to extend his own dominions. The former was unfortunate from the commencement to the conclusion, and the latter was so during the whole period in which George the Third exercised the government. But it was never hinted that the King, in encouraging and supporting the ministers who carried on the one or the other, had any other object but that of maintaining the lawful rights of his crown, and of upholding the constitution of the country which he governed. Even the tongue of slander went no farther than to charge him with an obstinate adherence to what it termed an extravagant opinion. And there was that firmness and hardihood in the King's mind which, even when things seemed most desperate, refused the unmanly expedient which sovereigns have some

times resorted to, in casting off an unfortunate minister to shelter themselves from popular indignation, as a sultan causes the head of the grandvizier to be thrown over the gates of the seraglio, to appease a mutiny among the Janizaries. In the situation of Charles the First, George the Third "would never have abandoned the Earl of Strafford. The obnoxious Earl of Bute retreated from his post of premier, giving way to a storm, which he perhaps foresaw would be dangerous to his master as well as to himself. But he was not dismissed by the King, who seems rather to have resented than approved of his resignation.

Taking his full share of the responsibility of the actions of his ministers when censured, George III. was equally ready to ascribe to them the full measure of merit which they could justly claim, even when he did them this justice at his own expense. The following anecdote is a remarkable proof of what we have said. The Egyptian expedition was planned almost exclusively by the late Lord Melville, and did not receive a cordial assent even from Mr Pitt himself. It was resolved upon in the council by the narrowest majority, and the Sovereign gave his written assent in words like the following: "I consent with the utmost reluctance, to a measure, which seems to me calculated to peril the flower of my army upon a distant and hazardous expedition." Under such discouraging auspices that expedition was undertaken, which was the first in the lengthened war that served distinctly to show, that, whether the encounter be by land or sea, the Briton is more than a match for his enemies. On

occasion of the King's breakfasting with Lord Melville at Wimbledon, during his retirement from office, in Lord Sidmouth's administration, he took a public and generous mode of acknowledging that minister's merit. He filled a glass of wine, and, having desired the Queen and company to follow his example, he drank "to the health of the minister, who, in opposition to the opinion of his colleagues, and under the avowed reluctance of his sovereign, dared to plan, and carry into execution, the Egyptian expedition."

The King's conduct towards the Coalition ministry, and afterwards to Fox and Grenville's administration, both of which were well understood to be forced upon him by parliament, in opposition to his own choice and wishes, was equally candid, open, and manly. He used no arts to circumvent or deceive the counsellors whom he unwillingly received into the cabinet; nor did he, on the other hand, impede their measures by petty opposition. While they were ministers, he gave them the full power of their situation; not affecting, at the same time, to conceal, that they were not those whose assistance he would voluntarily have chosen.

It is very well known, that many of the distinguished statesmen, who were called upon these occasions to approach the King's person, were surprised to find that they had formed a false estimate of his character. They had repeated it so often, that they were themselves convinced that the King's firmness was but the pertinacity of an obstinate unpersuadable man, of small abilities and a contracted judgment. They found on a nearer ap

proach to the Sovereign, that it was the resolution of a man of strong intellectual capacity, a shrewd and excellent judge of mankind, well acquainted with the constitution of Great Britain, and yet better with the peculiar character of her inhabitants. "They may say what they will of the King,” said a Scottish Whig, of great and deserved esteem in that party, "but he has more sense than the whole bunch of them."

The

Indeed, however inferior George the Third might be to many of the ministers whom the voice of Parliament had recommended, in theoretical or general information, he possessed in a degree far superior to most, perhaps to all of them, an accurate practical acquaintance with the temper and opinions of the people of Great Britain. "Charles Fox," said a lady of great sagacity, when speaking of that accomplished statesman, " is a very clever and highlygifted man, but he has never discovered the great secret that John Bull is a Tory by nature." King, however, had made this discovery. He knew that the sense of the kingdom could not be expressed by the mob, to whom the Whigs made too frequent appeals, and who swallow by wholesale whatever flatters their passions for the time; nor by the highest order of society, whom political connexions lead to form preconceived and unalterable opinions, or whom the eager pursuit of some favourite political scheme sometimes renders callous to the choice of the means by which it may be served; but by those numerous classes, whose education has prepared their minds for deciding on points which their leisure and habits give them opportunity and inclina

tion to consider, and who, themselves unengaged in the game, can the more soundly judge of the manner in which it is played. The King was aware of the weight which his personal character gave him amongst that middling but independent portion of the community; and trusting to his influence amongst them, he watched for, and embraced, the opportunities when he could make a successful appeal to their judgment and feelings. He availed himself, perhaps equally, of his natural tact, and of the experience which the miscarriages of the early part of his reign had taught him, to wait for the moment when the popular gale shifted against an unacceptable ministry, to make this appeal; and he chose his time so judiciously, that he was always successful, because, like an able general, he never commenced the contest until he had gained the advantage-ground on which the struggle was to be made. The two remarkable changes of administration which followed on Fox's India Bill, and on the Catholic question, manifested the King's skill in this species of tactics.

We have purposely delayed to mention one marked feature in George the Third's character. We have endeavoured to show him in his private and in his public capacity; but it remains to mention his sentiments and conduct in that relation, in which the King of the Islands, and of the Ocean which surrounds them, was of no higher importance than one of his meanest subjects. His conduct as a Christian indicated the firmest belief in the doctrines of our holy religion, as well as the deepest reverence for its practical precepts. He was con