ministers, to the full enjoyment of my rank in his Court upon my complete acquittal.

"Since his Majesty's lamented illness, I have demanded, in the face of Parliament and the country, to be proved guilty, or to be treated as innocent. I have been declared what I am-innocent.

"I will not submit to be treated as guilty.

"Your Royal Highness may possibly refuse to read this letter; but the world must know that I have written it; and they will see my real motives for foregoing in this instance the rights of my rank.

"Occasion, however, may arise (one, I trust, is far distant) when I must appear in public, and your Royal Highness must be present also.

"Can your Royal Highness have contemplated the full extent of your declaration? Has your Royal Highness forgotten the approaching marriage of our daughter, and the possibility of our coronation ?

"I waive my rights in a case where I am not absolutely bound to assert them, in order to relieve the Queen as far as I can from the painful situation in which she is placed by your Royal Highness; not from any consciousness of blame, not from any doubt of the existence of those rights, or my own worthiness to enjoy them.

"Šir, the time you have selected for this proceeding is calculated to make it peculiarly galling. Many illustrious strangers are already arrived in England; amongst others, as I am informed, the illustrious heir of the house of Orange, who has announced himself to me as my future son-inlaw.

"From their society I am unjustly excluded. Others are expected, of rank equal to your own,

to rejoice with your Royal Highness in the peace of Europe.

"My daughter will for the first time appear in the splendour and publicity becoming the approaching nuptials of the presumptive heiress of this empire.

"This season your Royal Highness has chosen for treating me with fresh and unprovoked indignity; and of all his Majesty's subjects I alone am prevented by your Royal Highness from appearing in my place to partake of the general joy; and am deprived of the indulgence in feelings of pride and affection permitted to every mother but me. I am, Sir, your Royal Highness's faithful wife, "CAROLINE, P.

"Connaught House,

'May 26th, 1814."

Acting on her avowed intention of making her remonstrance public, the Princess of Wales sent copies, both of her letter to the Regent, and the correspondence with Queen Charlotte to the House of Commons, at the same time expressing her fear that there were "ultimate objects in view pregnant with danger to the security, the succession, and the domestic peace of the realm." The papers were read on the 3rd of June, and followed by a warm debate, Mr. Methuen proposing an address to the Prince Regent, asking him to inform Parliament by whose advice he had come to the determination never again to meet the Princess. This proposition was however withdrawn, and Mr. Bathurst, the one advocate for the Government, declared that no imputation was sought to be cast on the Princess's reputation. "The charges of guilt," he said, "had been irresistibly refuted at a former period." What her friends styled an

exclusion from Court was simply a non-invitation to a Court festival-but, as her firm friend, Mr. Whitbread, remarked, "such non-invitation was an infliction worse than loss of life: it was loss of reputation, blasting to her character, fatal to her fame." An attempt to silence the matter was made by offering an increase of income to the Princess; but her friends declared that she would never stoop to barter her rank and rights for money, or allow herself to be pacified by bribes. She had, in truth, little love for riches, and was very far from avarice. Of this she had given a proof some little time previously, when, in spite of her treasurer, she had again got into difficulties, and some of her friends had sought aid from Parliament. "The Regent had caused it to be understood that he did not wish to curtail her personal comforts or cause her any pecuniary embarrassment, and Lord Castlereagh came down to the House with a proposition of settling on her £50,000 per annum. Of her own will she surrendered £15,000 of this sum, and it was agreed that the revenue of £35,000 per annum should be awarded to the Princess of Wales.' The sacrifice made by the Princess was gracefully noticed in the House by Mr. Whitbread, at whose suggestion it is said to have been cordially entered into, the Princess having, as he said, a full sense of the burthens that lay heavy on the nation.”*

* Dr. Doran.

CHAPTER IV.

Neglect of the Princess by the Emperor of Russia-Unpopularity of the Prince Regent-Unhappiness of Caroline-Scene at the Opera-Public enthusiasm for her-Her livelinessBreaking off of the Princess Charlotte's engagement-Her father's treatment of her-Her flight to her mother-The Princess of Wales' good sense-Her determination to travel -Brougham's letter to her-Her obstinacy-Her departure.

DISAPPOINTED of seeing the royal personages then in England at the Queen's Drawing-room, the Princess still looked forward with feverish expectation to receiving calls from the numerous royalties. "My ears are very ugly," she said quaintly, "but I will give them both to persuade the Emperor to come to me, to a ball, supper, any entertainment that he would choose." In this, as, poor thing, in most other matters on which she had set her heart, she was doomed to be disappointed. She sent her chamberlain to welcome the King of Prussia, and he, in defence of whose country her father had died, sent his chamberlain to acknowledge her courtesy. Nor did the Emperor of Russia visit her, although, hearing some idle rumour of his being about to do so, she sat up dressed to receive him; and her sister, the Duchess of Oldenburg, apologised, says Lady Charlotte Lindsay, "to Princess Charlotte, for not having been to visit the Princess of Wales, which she said she had fully intended to do, but that Count Lieven had entreated her not to do so, as he said the Prince Regent had positively commanded the foreign ministers not to go there. I think that she need not have minded him. What a strange thing it is that a man whom nobody respects

should so completely govern everybody! This Duchess does not, however, like him at all, as Princess Charlotte tells me." That the Duchess "did not like him at all," was not singular, it being a peculiarity shared in by the great majority of the Londoners, as they incontestably proved when he accompanied his royal guests to a grand City banquet. "Where's your wife?" was the general cry as he passed to the Guildhall; and "that portion of the mob which apparently consisted of women was loudest in its unsavoury exclamations against the Viceroy of the kingdom. The Princess was much mortified at receiving no invitation to the banquet from her City friends, whom she looked on as devoted to her interests; and the proposal of the not very wise Alderman Wood, whom some of his friends styled "Absolute Wisdom," on the lucus a non lucendo principal, to obtain her a window in Cheapside whence she could view her husband and his friends surrounded with the pomp which was denied to her, was not calculated to allay her vexation. She was peculiarly hurt when she found that the banquetters admitted other ladies, though she was excluded; and learnt that the Duchess of Oldenburg had accompanied her brother. This, however, was afterwards explained to her by an assurance that the Duchess had been brought thither by the Regent, and had received no bidding to the feast from the civic authorities. But explanations were little consolations to the poor Princess, who was enduring all the neglect, mortification, and insult that an unhappy royal lady well could. Even her friends, well-meaning and attached to her interests as they were, occasionally added to her daily worries. All her actions were directed and regu* Dr. Doran.