tard. Dites un peu, en passant, que la Mailbone soit prête. [Well, good bye, my dear children: it's getting late. Just hasten Mailbone as you go.] Exeunt.

The duplicity within duplicity of this passage respecting Princess Emily is remarkable. Its object is to pay respectful court to the Princess, and at the same time, to put her in the wrong and himself in the right with third parties, without leaving her any fault to find with the tone of his vindication.

Now compare what he here says of her, with the following passage in his Memoirs, which was written in the same year as the drama.

"The Queen used to speak to Lord

Hervey on this subject with as little reserve when the Princess Caroline was present as when alone; but never before the Princess Emily, who had managed her affairs so well, as to have lost entirely the confidence of her mother, without having obtained the friendship of her brother. By trying to make her court by turns to both, she had by turns betrayed both, and at last lost both.

"Princess Emily had much the least sense, except her brother, of the family, but had for two years much the prettiest person. She was lively, false, and a great liar ; did many ill offices to people, and no good ones; and, for want of prudence, said as many shocking things to their faces, as for want of good-nature or truth she said disagreeable ones behind their backs.

She

had as many enemies as acquaintances, for nobody knew her without disliking her.

"Lord Hervey was very ill with her: she had first used him ill, to flatter her brother, which of course had made him not use her very well; and the preference on every occasion he gave her sister, the Princess Caroline, completed their mutual dislike."

Take also the following incident, though it occurred at St. James's, and not at Kensington.

"One night whilst the Queen was ill, as he (the King) was sitting in his night-gown and night-cap in a great chair, with his legs upon a stool, and nobody in the room with him but the Princess Emily, who lay upon a

couch, and Lord Hervey, who sat by the fire, he talked in this strain of his own courage in the storm and his illness, till the Princess Emily, as Lord Hervey thought, fell fast asleep, whilst Lord Hervey, as tired as he was of the present conversation and this last week's watching, was left alone to act civil auditor and adroit courtier, to applaud what he heard, and every now and then to ask such proper questions as led the King into giving some more particular detail of his own magnanimity. The King, turning towards Princess Emily, and seeing her eyes shut, cried,

"Poor good child! her duty, affection, and attendance on her mother have quite exhausted her spirits.'

"And soon after he went into the Queen's

room.

"As soon as his back was turned, Prin

cess Emily started up, and said,

"Is he gone? How tiresome he is!' "Lord Hervey, who had no mind to trust her Royal Highness with his singing her father's praises in duetto with her, replied only,

"I thought your Royal Highness had been asleep.'

'No,' said the Princess Emily; 'I

only shut my eyes that I might not join in the ennuyant conversation, and wish I could have shut my ears too. In the first place, I am sick to death of hearing of his great courage every day of my life; in the next place, one thinks now of Mama, and not of him. Who cares for his old storm? I believe, too, it is a great lie, and that he was as much afraid as I should have been,