returns of the day. Now you may go on, but remember I spoke first."

нитого

Lord Eldon was on another occasion in the presence of George the Third, when the Archbishop of Canterbury, and other persons of high rank, formed the circle around the sovereign. “I believe," remarked the king, "that I am the first king whose Archbishop of Canterbury and whose chancellor both ran away with their wives. Was it not so, chancellor?" Lord Eldon was sly Ka's enough to turn the laugh from himself to the archbishop. "May it please your Majesty," he said, "to ask the archbishop that question first.” "It turned the laugh," said Lord Eldon, "to my side, for the lords were beginning to titter." The king on another occasion observed to Archbishop Sutton, "I believe your Grace has a large family better than a dozen." "No, Sir," replied the archbishop, "only eleven." "Well," retorted the king, "is not that better than a dozen?"

Nothing the king liked better than to fling a good humoured jest at the lawyers. For instance, at the time when Lord Chief Baron Macdonald and Mr. Baron Graham were severally sitting in the courts of Westminster, it was remarked that the only fault of the one lay in his fingers, which were never out of his snuff-box; and that of the other, that his tongue was seldom silent. "True!" remarked the king, "the Court of Exchequer

has a snuff-box at one end, and a chatter-box at the other."

Lord Eldon himself, as we have seen, was not exempt from the harmless raillery of his sovereign. At the time when the punishment of death was much more common than at the present day, it happened that a footpad had been condemned to death on account of a street robbery which he had committed close to Lord Eldon's residence in Bedford Square. When the recorder presented his report to the king, all the ministers, with the exception of one, gave it as their opinion that the man should be left for execution. Observing, however, that Lord Eldon had not spoken, the king called upon him for his opinion, which the chancellor gave in favour of mercy. It had been the custom, said his lordship, to hang for street robberies, and no doubt the offence was a very grave one. He considered, however, that a distinction ought to be made between cases in which personal violence had been resorted to, and cases in which there had been none. In the present instance, he added, there had been no violence, and he therefore thought it a case in which his Majesty might fairly exercise his royal clemency. "Very well," said the king, "since his lordship, who lives in Bedford Square, thinks there is no great harm in committing robberies there, the poor fellow shall not be hanged."

One more anecdote may be related, having ref

erence to another eminent judge, Lord Kenyon. Though in other respects a very worthy man, Lord Kenyon was frequently betrayed into ebullitions of temper, which, in his cooler moments, no one could more deeply regret than himself, and which, in fact, on his becoming chief justice of the King's Bench, he had strength of mind enough to lay under a wholesome control. The king, who had a great personal regard for Lord Kenyon, was very well pleased with his reformation, "My lord," he said to him, with a pleasant play upon the words, "I hear that since you have been in the King's Bench, you have lost your temper. You know my great regard for you, and I may therefore venture to tell you that I was glad to hear it."

With the wit and eccentricities of George Selwyn, not omitting the morbid pleasure he took in witnessing appalling scenes, the king seems to have been perfectly familiar. The following ex

tract of a letter from Storer to Lord Auckland not only exhibits a pleasing instance of the king's humour, but it also introduces us to George Selwyn himself and his protégée, the future Marchioness of Hertford, the mysterious "Mie Mie" of the Selwyn correspondence. "A great event has taken place in Selwyn's family. Mademoiselle Fagniani has been presented at court. Of course, Miss Fagniani, for she was presented as a subject of Great Britain, was very splendid; but George was most magnificent, and new in every article of