was standing," he says, "next to a Venetian nobleman. The king was conversing with him about the Republic of Venice, and, hastily turning to me, said, 'There, now; you hear what he says about a republic.' My answer was, 'Sir, I look upon a republic as one of the worst forms of government.' The king gave me, as he thought, another blow about a republic. I answered that I could not live under a republic. His Majesty still pursued the subject. I thought myself insulted, and firmly said, 'Sir, I look upon the tyranny of any one man to be an intolerable evil, and upon the tyranny of a hundred to be a hundred times as bad.' The king went off. His Majesty, I doubt not, had given credit to the calumnies, which the court insects had buzzed into his ears, of my being a favourer of republican principles, because I was known to be a supporter of revolution principles, and had a pleasure in telling me what he thought of me." The bishop lived to earn the gratitude of his sovereign. Five years afterward, when the doctrines broached by the French revolutionists were not only spreading rapidly over Europe, but when the common people, in every village in England, were talking wildly about liberty and equality, the bishop published a sermon which had a considerable share in allaying the ferment.' Highly grati "The Wisdom and Goodness of God, in having made both Rich and Poor." The bishop at a later period reiterated his fied at the conduct of the Whig prelate, the king not only spoke of the sermon to the Archbishop of Canterbury in terms of high praise, but when the bishop next made his appearance at the levee, the king personally expressed to him the strong and grateful sense which he entertained of the service which he had rendered to monarchy, as well as to the community at large. “Sir,” said the bishop, "I love to come forward in a moment of danger." "I see you do," replied the king, "and it is a mark of a man of high spirit." ▪ It was on the occasion of Bishop Watson publishing his "Apology for Christianity," that George the Third made his well-known remark, that "he never before was aware that Christianity stood in need of any apology." The following brief account of a levee scene at St. James's, from the pen of another literary prelate, the celebrated Bishop Warburton, although it be of less value as bearing upon the story of George the Third, than as being characteristic of the bishop himself, is nevertheless worthy of notice. "I brought as usual," writes the bishop, fear and dislike of French republican principles in a publication entitled 66 The Substance of a Speech intended to have been spoken in the House of Lords, November 22, 1803." " His Majesty's reception of me at his levee, to which I went once, or at the most twice, a year," writes the Whig prelate, "was always so complimentary that, notwithstanding the pestilent prevalence of court duplicity, I cannot bring myself to believe that he was my enemy.” on the 20th of February, 1767, "a bad cold with me to town, and, this being the first day I ventured out-of-doors, it was employed, as in duty bound, at court, it being a levee day. A buffoon lord in waiting—you may guess whom I mean was very busy marshaling the circle, and he said to me, without ceremony, Move forward! you clog up the doorway.' I replied, with as little, 'Did nobody clog up the king's doorway more than I have, there would be room for all honest men.' This brought the man to himself. When the king came up to me he asked, 'Why I did not come to town before?' I said, 'I understood there was no business going forward in the House in which I could be of service to his Majesty.' He replied, He supposed the severe storm of snow would have brought me up.' I replied, 'I was under cover of a very warm house.' You see by all this how unfit I am for courts." The circumstance is rather a notable one, that, of the persons who had the most reason to dislike or to be disliked by George the Third, two at least should have borne pleasing testimony, the one to his intelligence, and the other to his virtues. "Wilkes," writes Butler the "Reminiscent," "thought highly of the talents and firmness of the late king, and was persuaded that a ministry protected by him could not, without some singular blunder, or some event singularly unlucky, be shaken by any opposition." "I believe," writes Benjamin Franklin, "that had the king had a bad character, and Wilkes a good one, the latter might have turned the former out of his kingdom." Again Franklin writes, during the London riots in May, 1768: "What the event will be, God only knows. But some punishment seems preparing for a people who are ungratefully abusing the best Constitution and the best king any nation was ever blessed with." END OF VOLUME II. APPENDIX. I. AD SERENISSIMUM GEORGIUM WALLIE PRINCIPEM IN OBITUM FREDERICI WALLIE PRINCIPIS. SPES, nuper altera, prima nunc Britanniæ ! Parere priùs assuesce; inoffenso pede Dum lubrica per semitam puer'tiæ; Primum esse civem, deinde principem docet: |