Majesty the Queen, his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, the bride and bridegroom, with the rest of the royal family, retired to the royal closet. The bride and bridegroom soon after left Carlton House for Oatlands, the seat of his Royal Highness the Duke of York. Her Majesty the Queen, his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and the rest of the royal family, passed into the great council chamber, where the great officers, nobility, foreign ministers, and other persons of distinction present, paid their compliments on the occasion. Immediately after the conclusion of the marriage the Park and Tower guns were fired, and the evening concluded with other public demonstrations of joy throughout the metropolis.

Prince Leopold was naturalized by an Act of Parliament, passed previously to his marriage; and referring to this subject in the speech of the Regent from the throne at the prorogation, he announced another royal marriage, between the Princess Mary and the Duke of Gloucester. Thus, in the course of one year, the prospect of the legitimate succession of the Brunswick line presented itself under the most favourable auspices; but the manner in which that prospect was blighted belongs to a future part of our history.

Ecce iterum Crispinus. The marriage of the Princess Charlotte had scarcely taken place, when the public attention was again drawn to the expensive habits of the Prince of Wales, through whose profusion the Civil List was constantly in arrear. His rage for the interior decoration of his palaces appeared to bid defiance to every principle of economy or of prudence. If his eyes were dazzled by the splendour of his gewgaws-if he could behold his Adonis-like form reflected from a hundred mirrors-if he could lie entranced in the lap of some meretricious dame, or brutalize himself with his nocturnal potations of the most stimulating liquors—what were to him the distresses of the country, the impoverished state of its finances, the depression of its commerce, or the starving condition of the people? Heedless of all but the gratification of his own inordinate desires, he persisted in a system of extravagance, profuse as it was vicious-immoral as it was ruinous. Agents were employed abroad to select the most costly pieces of furniture, which, after having been paid for,

and submitted to his royal inspection, were found not to suit his taste, and were restored to the cases in which they had been imported, to be consigned as tenants of the lumber-room. Like Charles II. of Spain, he had always some ruling hobbyhorse (query, hobby-mare?), which always galloped away with him into the treasury of the country, from which, returning with the requisite load, it was in a short time neglected to make room for another still more expensive in its support and keeping. De gustibus non est disputandum; but perhaps no prince ever displayed so much frivolity and littleness in the choice of some of his hobbies, as the Prince of Wales, but in the keeping of which he obtained the envied title of a magnificent patron of the arts. The zoologists lauded him, because he knew a parrot from a kangaroo. The architects, with Sir Jeffrey Wyatville at their head, praised him because he knew the difference between a Chinese pagoda-videlicet, at Virginia Water—and a Turkish mosque, invented by Nash at Brighton. The antiquarians placed him at the head of their learned body, because, when the furor antiquitatis was upon him, they obtained 2501. from him for the candlestick which Paris used when he lighted Helen to her bed: and Mr. Ustonson of Fleetstreet, of piscatorial celebrity, bruited it about in the vicinity of Temple-bar, that George IV. was the greatest monarch that ever filled the throne of this country, because his bill amounted every year to several hundred pounds for fishing-rods, bloodworms, and gentles. Let not these things be considered as derogatory to royalty, or that they are indicative of a little mind :-Buonaparte often amused himself with a game at marbles-George III. with turning a needle-case or a tobaccostopper-Gustavus of Sweden employed his leisure hours in building houses with cards-and a far greater man than either of them, Isaac Newton, delighted at playing at push-pin. Sterne says, 'I quarrel not with the hobby of any man's choosing, unless he rides over me, or so bespatters me with mud, that my friends cannot recognize me;'-and it is on this account that we find fault with the hobbies of the Prince of Wales: for their support, he rode rough-shod over the people; he so bespattered them with the consequences of his extravagance, that nothing but the strong arm of military power could

have kept them true to their allegiance, or saved his throne from overthrow and destruction.

Nothing could exceed the indignation of the people, when the Civil List came before Parliament in May, 1816, and 50,000l. were found to have been expended in furniture at Brighton, immediately after 534,000l. had been voted for covering the excess of the Civil List, occasioned entirely by the reckless extravagance of the Prince Regent. The exertions of Mr. Tierney to introduce something like economy in the different departments were incessant. He lamented,' he said, 'that his Royal Highness was surrounded by advisers who precipitated him into such profusion. At his time of life, something different ought to be expected. The whole powers of his mind-the whole force of his ingenuity-appear to be employed in discovering some useless bauble on which money can be expended, merely from the love of spending. He knew, he said, there were those about him who encouraged and promoted those wasteful and frivolous objects, for the purpose of enriching themselves at the sacrifice of their sovereign's character and reputation.' On another occasion, Mr. Brougham, with the most pointed severity, inveighed against the indifference to the distress of the country manifested by the Prince's profusion; and he predicted that, unless some immediate change took place in the expensive habits of the Prince, the same game would be played in England as had latterly been exhibited in France.

These reiterated complaints, to which a deaf and sullen ear was turned, aggravated the distresses of the people; in a season of universal complaint as then existed, they increased the unpopularity of the Prince Regent, and broke out in a short time in open acts of violence against his person.

It was, however, not only the extravagance of the Prince that tended at this time to keep the public mind in a state of feverish excitation. That plenty and prosperity are not always the concomitants of peace too soon became apparent; and the excitement under which immense sums were lavished away having subsided, the nation, in its sober judgment, began to feel and to repent of its extravagance. The object that had been gained did not appear as an equivalent to the heavy