curious from the secret feelings which this court historian must have entertained, both while he was writing it, and while he was talking it.

He was one day in conversation with the King and Queen, when he told them that "he knew three people that were writing the history of his Majesty's reign, who could possibly know nothing of the palace and his Majesty's closet; and yet would, he doubted not, pretend to make their whole. history one continued dissection of both.

"You mean," said the King, "Lords Bolingbroke, Chesterfield, and Carteret." "I do," replied Lord Hervey.

"They will all three," said the King, "have as much truth in them as the Mille et Une Nuits-(the Arabian Nights.) Not but I shall like to read Bolingbroke's, who,

VOL. II.

M

of all those rascals and knaves that have

been lying against me these ten years, has certainly the best parts and the most knowledge. He is a scoundrel; but he is a scoundrel of a higher class than Chesterfield. Chesterfield is a little tea-table scoundrel, that tells little womanish lies to make quarrels in families; and tries to make women lose their reputations, and make their husbands beat them,* without any object but to give himself airs; as if anybody could believe a woman could like a dwarf-baboon."

The Queen said all these three histories would be three heaps of lies, but lies of very different kinds. She said "Bolingbroke's

* Strange intimation of manners at that time! Footmen were beaten, according to what we read in comedies; but we never before met with an intimation of the beating of gentlewomen.

would be great lies; Chesterfield's little lies; and Cartaret's lies of both sorts."

Doubtless both King and Queen suspected that their chattering and scribbling ViceChamberlain would himself write the Secret History; and they flattered themselves, that as he flattered them so strongly to their faces, he would be equally respectful to their memories.

We have seen the result. None of the other three histories ever made their appearance; and Hervey, perhaps, only mentioned them in order to take a treacherous pleasure in contemplating the faces and the feelings of his victims.

With Caroline's power to hold court-days at Kensington, her connexion with the place ceases; for she did not die there. George the Second, ever regretting the loss of her,

did; though it was not of sorrow for the loss, for he survived her upwards of twenty years. He died even of a broken heart; though, like many a man who has so done, he does not appear to have been suffering under any particular affliction. Many men die of broken hearts, who have no afflictions; and many die of affliction, whose hearts have remained physically untouched.

On the morning of the 25th October, 1760, a fall was heard in the royal apartments, soon after breakfast. It was the King. He had cut his face against a bureau, in the act of falling, and was dead of disease of the heart, at the age of seventy-eight.

On examination of the body, the right ventricle of the heart was found burst. He

was, otherwise, in good health; and, owing to a combination of lucky circumstances, he was one of the most prosperous monarchs that ever sat on the British throne. But prosperity, perhaps, had aggravated the selfwill in which it is the misfortune of most princes to be too much indulged; contradictoin becomes unbearable to them; the heart is rendered diseased by agitation at every little annoyance; and a small trouble may give it the mortal blow.

The peril is not

even to common

confined to kings, or understandings. John Hunter, the celebrated surgeon, died of a paroxysm of this disease, merely because he was opposed by some professional brethren in his recommendation of a man whom he patronized. George the Second, after all, had had his way, for the most part, so pleasantly to