"Brougham could not but be sensible how much of her confidence he had forfeited, and the effect on his conduct was attended with mischievous consequences, the worst of which was the want of countenance and attention from the Whig ladies of quality. If he had sent Mrs. Brougham to pay her respects on Her Majesty's arrival, many of these ladies, with whom he was living upon terms of the greatest intimacy would have followed her example, particularly the Countess of Jersey, whose popularity in the fashionable world was unbounded. A report was spread that she had confidentially asked Brougham for his advice, and that he exhorted her to abstain from calling. The truth of this is unknown to me, but it is certain that when the newspapers inserted Lady Jersey's name and that of Lady Fitzwilliam among the visitors at the Queen's miserable residence in Portman Street [Lady Ann Hamilton's, to which she had removed from South Audley Street] the statement received a formal contra diction. "My wife was extremely anxious to call, but I begged her to wait till Mrs. Brougham should do so, dreading that such scenes of vice and debauchery would be proved as would overwhelm with shame any woman who had formed any acquaintance with the criminal. "I have often regretted this weakness, but whoever considers the abominable slanders that were then freely circulating in society, and remembers that Brougham had infinitely better means than myself of appreciating their truth, will not perhaps entirely condemn it. Besides, I had not been honored by the Queen's previous notice, and Mrs. Denman filled no rank in society, and mingled very little with the world. At the same time her view of the case now appears to me perfectly right, and my own erroneous. The visit would have been a homage due to the rank of my royal mistress, and would have been justified by it and by my official relation to her, as long as the charges were unproved, even if they could have been established afterwards, while its being withholden bore the appearance of a knowledge on the part of her legal defenders that her conduct had been disgraceful, and thus to a certain degree assisted the evidence against her." The above passage appears hardly just either to Brougham or to Denman himself. As far as Brougham is concerned, it seems not fair to suppose that his conduct in this matter was mainly or at all influenced by the Queen's obvious distrust or dislike towards himself. It was not because the Queen distrusted or disliked him that Brougham hesitated at this stage of the proceedings to commit his wife or the ladies of the Whig nobility to a distinct espousal of the Queen's cause. The words above printed in italics seem to supply quite a sufficient reason for the line taken at this period both by Brougham and by Denman. Neither could then know what might or might not be proved against the Queen. It must further be observed, as Denman indeed intimates, and as Brougham in his "Autobiography" has expressly stated, that the latter was acquainted with circumstances unknown to the Queen's other advisers, "of great indiscretions on her part, though entirely unconnected with the charges now made against her." The knowledge of these circumstances no doubt influenced Brougham's conduct and demeanor in the earlier part of the proceedings, and greatly accounted for the Queen's distrust. "In this state of destitution [the personal narrative proceeds], without more than half a dozen ladies of rank and character having even left their cards at her door, it was marvellous to contrast the Queen's daily life with the royal spirit that sustained her. Tindal' will never forget the look and gesture with which she said to us, in her miserable back drawing-room in Portman Street, 'I will be crowned.' Her popularity meanwhile continued to increase. The season of addresses set in. The Lord Mayor and Common Council filled Oxford Street with their long string of carriages, and were received with grace and dignity by the woman who occupied the highest rank in Europe in two mean drawing-rooms of an inferior ready-furnished house. When that body had retired, she greeted the populace assembled in that narrow street from a little railed balcony, on which Alderman Wood spread a shabby rug to distract the impertinent 1Of Counsel for the Queen; Solicitor-General, 1826; Chief Justice of Common Pleas, 1829; died, 1846. gaze of those who stood directly beneath. Frequently in the course of a day she was called to the window by the crowd and appeared. When she took an airing it was in a hired chariot and pair, driven by a post-boy, with Lady Ann Hamilton by her side within, and William Austen' and the black seated on the dicky. Popularity, indeed, was secured, but I have always thought that more of it, and of a better sort, might have been acquired. by a very different line of conduct." 1 Child of a father of same name, a sailmaker in Deptford dockyard; adopted by Caroline in 1802. Brougham, however, says that the William Austen of 1820 was not the son of the sailmaker, but of Prince William Louis of Prussia, by one of Caroline's attendants ir. Germany: this lad, he states, had been substituted for the Deptford child a few years before 1820. ("Brougham's Memoir," vol. ii. p. 425.) HILE the secret committee of the Lords were W engaged in examining the Green Bag papers, various attempts at an amicable arrangement were unsuccessfully made. One of the earliest of these was the conference between the Duke of Wellington and Lord Castlereagh as representing the King, and Brougham and Denman as representing the Queen. The points to be discussed were: 1. The future residence of the Queen abroad; 2. The title to be assumed by her; 3. The nature of the patronage she was to exercise in England; 4. The income to be assigned to her for her life. The first meeting of this conference took place on June 14; on the 19th the negotiations were finally broken off, the Queen wholly rejecting the conditions proposed with reference to the first point, viz., her foreign residence. The circumstances connected with this meeting are thus related in the personal narrative : "We were received by Lord Castlereagh in his parlor, after he had entertained a party o foreign ambassadors. He was covered with diamonds, stars, and ribands; the Duke of Wellington was equally splendid. We two meagre lawyers must have formed an amusing foil to the eye of a painter, but Lord Castlereagh answered our apologies about inferior rank by assuring us that it was their wish to meet us as men of business, rather than persons of high station and formality. He assumed an air of agreeable frankness, and contrived to place himself in a position which cut me off, as the left wing, from Brougham's main body. My leader showed great address in introducing the subject of the Liturgy, which had not at that time been brought forward in a manner at all proportionate to its importance. Speaking of some expedient to reconcile Her Majesty to a stipulation that she would reside on the Continent, to which he merely said that she had no insuperable objection (though, in fact, this was the basis of our negotiation), he suggested in a sort of hurried whisper that the restoration of her name to the Liturgy might answer that purpose. Lord Castlereagh promptly replied, 'You might as easily move Carlton House." This conference having come to nothing, the House of Commons, on June 22, passed a resolution, on the motion of Wilberforce, declaring their opinion that, when such considerable advances had been made toward an adjustment, Her Majesty, by yielding to the wishes of the House, and forbearing to press further the propositions on which a material difference still remained, would not be understood as shrinking from inquiry, but only as proving her desire to acquiesce in the opinion of Parliament. In the debate that ensued on this motion of Wilberforce's, Denman made a powerful and impressive speech, in the course of which he pronounced a few memorable words, the sudden coinage of high-wrought emotion, which were soon current throughout all ranks of society. In reply to the suggestion that, though all particular mention of the Queen's name was omitted from the Liturgy, she might yet be considered as being comprised in the general prayer for the royal family, he said, in a tone of the deepest and most solemn pathos, that “if Her Majesty was included in any general prayer, it was the prayer for all that are desolate and oppressed." The personal narrative relates as follows the debate on Wilberforce's motion, the presentation of the House of Commons address, and its rejection by the Queen: "This important motion was introduced by Wilberforce in an excellent and most conciliatory speech, but in the course of the debate Lord Castlereagh avowed that |