CHAPTER V.

Death of the King's Sister, Princess Louisa Anne-Birth of Princess Augusta - Christian VII. of Denmark, Brother-inlaw of the King, Visits England - Received with Coolness at Court, and Warmly by the People — Lord Chatham Recovers His Mental Faculties - Resigns Office - Is Succeeded as Premier by the Duke of Grafton - Lord Chatham Takes Part in the Debate on the Address Resignation of Lord Chancellor Camden - Succeeded by the Honourable Charles Yorke Distressing Death of the New Lord Chancellor.

On the 13th of May, 1768, death terminated the brief and blameless career of the king's third sister, the Princess Louisa Anne. Afflicted with bodily disease from her infancy, she was also so diminutive in stature that, though she had completed her nineteenth year, she presented the appearance of a sickly child of thirteen or fourteen. Fortunately an ardent love of literature had rendered her existence an endurable, if not a happy one; while her singular sweetness of disposition endeared her to all who were either witnesses of her sufferings, or whom she honoured with her regard. For some months previously to her decease she had been afflicted with a troublesome cough, which was followed by a rapid consumption that hurried her to the grave.

This event was succeeded, on the eighth of November following, by the birth of the king's second daughter, the Princess Augusta. The queen's lying-in took place at Buckingham House, where, with the exception of George the Fourth, she gave birth to all her numerous offspring.

In the meantime, the monotony of the court had been interrupted by the arrival in England of the most frivolous of modern European sovereigns, Christian the Seventh, King of Denmark, who, two years previously, had married Caroline Matilda, the youngest sister of George the Third; the former then in his nineteenth, and the latter in her sixteenth year. The melancholy story of this ill-fated princess belongs to a later period of our annals. At present it is sufficient to mention that their nuptials had conduced to the happiness of neither. Even at this early period of their union, we find the Danish monarch embittering the existence of his consort by his ill treatment of her, while the queen, on her part, is said to have spoken and written of her husband in terms of unequivocal contempt.

The visit of Christian to England, owing to his coarse profligacy, his brutal conduct to his wife, and partly on account of the bustle and parade which his sojourn was sure to occasion at St. James's, was very far from affording pleasure to George the Third.

The King to Viscount Weymouth.

"RICHMOND LODGE, June 8, 1768, m p' 6 P. M. "LORD WEYMOUTH : As to-morrow is the day you receive foreign ministers, you will acquaint M. de Dieden that I desire he will assure the king, his master, that I am desirous of making his stay in this country as agreeable as possible. That I therefore wish to be thoroughly apprised of the mode in which he chooses to be treated, that I may exactly conform to it. This will throw whatever may displease the King of Denmark, during his stay here, on his shoulders, and consequently free me from that désagrément; but you know very well that the whole of it is very disagreeable to me."

In pursuance of the intentions expressed in this note, apartments in St. James's Palace were set apart for the use of the Danish king; gold plate, which was rarely used except at coronations, was brought from the Tower to decorate his sideboard; and lastly, so hospitable a table was kept for him as to have cost his brother monarch £84 a day, exclusive of the expense of wine. Yet, if Walpole is to be believed, so marked was the neglect, if not contempt, manifested by the one king for the other, that when the "royal Dane" arrived at St. James's it was in a hired carriage. No military escort, according to Walpole, was appointed to meet him on the road; not even a lord of the

bedchamber was despatched to do him honour. Walpole, however, had been misinformed. Not only were the royal carriages, though the Danish monarch declined making use of them, waiting for him on his landing at Dover, but, by the command of the court, the Earl of Hertford and Lord Falmouth were there to bid him welcome. No doubt the personal intercourse between the two monarchs was sufficiently cold and unsatisfactory. George the Third, for instance, is said to have been holding a levee at St. James's Palace at the time of Christian's arrival there, yet, instead of hastening to welcome his kinsman, he contented himself with sending him a chilling message that he would receive him at the Queen's House at half-past five o'clock.

But if Christian had reasonable grounds for complaining of the neglect of the English court, he had, on the other hand, every motive for being satisfied with the absurdly enthusiastic reception which he met with from all classes of society. "The King of Denmark," writes Whately to George Grenville, "is the only topic of conversation. Wilkes himself is forgotten, even by the populace." The University of Oxford, in full convocation, conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law. A deputation from the University of Cambridge conferred upon him the same distinction. The benchers of the Templeinvited him to luncheon. The Lord Mayor and

Corporation of London not only honoured him with a splendid banquet, and flattered him in nauseously adulatory language, but at night the citizens illuminated their houses along the line of streets by which he returned from Guildhall to St. James's. And yet, all this time, the young debauchee was spending his days in hurrying from sight to sight which he scarcely looked at, and his nights in drinking and frolicking, disguised as a common sailor, in the stews and pot-houses of St. Giles's.

"You cannot speak of reason to the Dane."

That these facts were known to the people of rank and fashion of the day can scarcely be doubted; yet, despite the vices and follies of the Danish king, we find the aristocracy vying one with the other which could most do him honour by the splendour of the entertainments to which they invited him. As for the women, if Endymion had descended upon earth, they could scarcely have made a greater fuss about him. To be seen without a "Danish Fly," as a new style of head-dress was called after him, would have amounted, to say the least of it, to being out of fashion.

In the meantime, the object of all this admiration seems to have been in no hurry to depart from a country in which his merits were so highly appreciated. "The little king," writes Lord March to George Selwyn, in a letter apparently from Newmarket, "is, I believe, perfectly satisfied with his