floor; and his dignified majesty did not scruple to be very much diverted, and laugh. The Countess, in return, contrived without more ado to play him the same trick; and his dignity was so offended, that a rupture ensued between them, and she was forbidden the Court.

George the Second, like his father, had two chief mistresses; one of them a German, of the name of Walmoden, whom he made Countess of Yarmouth; the other, the Countess of Suffolk before-mentioned; both of them well-tempered, discreet women, who appear to have been as much the favourites of his sober hours, or more so, than of the impassioned moments for which credit was given them. His chief passion had been for his wife; and Sir Robert Walpole showed a rare knowledge of a little-suspected, but no

less certain corner in human nature, by discovering, that the wife retained an ascendancy over the mistresses by setting her husband's pleasure above every other consideration, and so possessing his unbounded confidence. It was a curious instance of the sentiments of those times; at least, in courts; but Caroline of Anspach had been bred up in them, and she carried their toleration to

amount that was perhaps unequalled, especially among those who most availed themselves of the license. This was the reverse of her own case, for she seems to have been as faithful as she was devoted; and her husband passionately said of her, after her death, that he had never loved any woman as he did her.

One of the proofs of Caroline's considering her husband's wishes above all things,

was her going a hunting with him in a chaise, like Queen Anne, though she was in a state of health which must have rendered it more painful to her embonpoint, than it was to that of the dull female Nimrod, her precursor. Another proof, still greater, was her putting her gout-swollen legs into cold water, in order to enable her to accompany her husband in his walks; a dangerous excess of conjugality, which, perhaps, helped to kill her. Caroline's enemies, including a false friend and servile worshipper, of whom more anon, attributed all this self-denial to the desire of secretly ruling where she seemed to do nothing but obey. How could they tell? or if they could tell in part, why was that kind of ascendancy to be a vice in her, which a poet (no friend of hers) proclaimed to be a virtue in others, and which could

never enter the head but of a loving or a generous nature, whatever were the faults of its breeding?

'Oh! bless'd with temper, whose unclouded ray
Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day;

She who can love a sister's charms, or hear
Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear;
She who ne'er answers till a husband cools,
Or if she rules him, never shows she rules;
Charms by accepting, by submitting sways,
Yet has her humour most when she obeys."

There is a curious reference in a lampoon of the time, to Caroline's habit of walking with her husband, and her not being able to walk so fast, which as it has a relation to the gardens before us, shall here be repeated. Swift, who was in opposition to the Court, thought it very good; and it is not unamusing. "The great river Euphrates" is

the poor Serpentine, Caroline's creation out of ponds; and the king's repetitions of his words, "Who be "Who be ye, who be ye? &c.," looks like the origin of a personal peculiarity of his grandson, George the Third. The jeud'esprit is headed: "Supposed to be written on account of three gentlemen being seen in Kensington Gardens by the King and Queen while they were walking." It was thought to be the production of Pulteney or Chesterfield, Walpole's opponents; and two of the gentlemen were probably themselves, the third being Wyndham or Bolingbroke, also his opponents.

"Now it came to pass in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, in the eighth month, in the sixth year of the King, in the beginning of hay-harvest, that the King and Queen walked arm-in-arm in the