which g gave the great offence to the people. It was this speech that put an end to his power; and, certainly, for audacity, for contempt towards the people, it never had its equal. The whole country, with the exclusion of those who lived on the taxes and the tithes, were loudly calling for a reform of the House of Commons; and every one was convinced that no good could come to the country without such reform. It was in this state of things that he uttered the following most audacious and most insolent words: mudhu "The noble earl (GREY) had recommended the expedient "of Parliamentary reform, and remarked that he did not think that the Government was as yet prepared with any plan on Government was the subject. The noble earl was right; for certainly the "Government was not prepared with any plan for Para❝mentary reform. I will go further, and say, that I never a more improved or more satis "factory representation than this country enjoys at this moment. "I do "bable not mean to enter upon that subject now, as it is probable we shall have abundant opportunities to consider it "afterwards: and I do say that this country has now a legis flature more calculated to answer all the purposes of a good legislature than any other that can well be devised-that it "possesses, and deservedly possesses, the confidence of the country, and that its discussions have a powerful influence in the country. And I will say further, that if I had to "form a legislature, I would create one, not equal in excel "lence to the present, for that I could not expect to be able to do,

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heard that any country ever
country ever had and

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but something as nearly of the same description as pos "sible. I should form it of men possessed of a very large proportion of the property of the country, in which the "land-holders should have a great preponderance. I, there "fore, am not prepared with any measure of Parliamentary "Reform, nor shall any measure of the kind be proposed BY "THE GOVERNMENT AS LONG AS I HOLD MY "PRESENT POSITION."

488. After this, it was a running fight with the "hero of WATERLOO," whom the people hooted and pelted wherever they could see him. But this matter, together with the king's disappointing the citizens of London in not dining with them in their Guildhall, the exclamation of Sir ROBERT PEEL, "What shall we do with the duke"? the pretence upon which the duke finally resigned; his having bullet-proof window-shutters to his house; all these belong to the history of William the Fourth; together with the pulling down of the sign-posts which had the duke's name on picture upon them; and the rubbing out of his name from the corners of the streets, on which that name had been so recently put, as a mark of the public esteem in which he was held. These things we must now leave, and return to the BIG SOVEREIGN, and see the end of his career.

489. In the year 1821 he visited his subjects in Ireland; and he was in the Isle of ANGLESEA, at the house of the marquis of that name, while the people were fighting against his soldiers, in the streets of London, over the dead body of his wife. Not one single address either of condolence or of congratulation; not one pledge of support had the poor queen ever received from Ireland; and not above two or three from Scotland. It was not that the people of those countries did not feel for her, but that they did not

dare to express their feeling; and thus it always is with colonies, and with parts of a kingdom detached from the main and ruling part. This man, however, as such a man naturally would, imputed the silence of the people of those countries to their wondrous affection for himself, The Irish, above all others, were now his favourites; and they, forgetting the laws that had been passed against them, and deluded most probably by arts of all sorts, gave him a most enthusiastic reception; while he, a glimpse of whose person had hardly ever been got at by his English subjects, for years past, sought opportunities of getting himself surrounded by mobs of people out of doors; and even came down so low as to put the SHAMROCK (an Irish word for Dutch or white clover) in his hat, which he pulled off and swung, in company with his intense subjects. All this did not pass unobserved, or unreasoned upon, by his English subjects, with whom it was by no means an argument in support of the proposition, that they had been in the wrong.

490. From Ireland he returned to BRIGHTHELMSTONE, in Sussex, where he had a thing which he called a "pavilion," which had cost the nation not less than a million of money. As if weary of popularity; as if sick of the plaudits of his subjects, very few of them could get a sight of his person from the moment that he set his foot again in England. Instead of going to

BRIGHTHELMSTONE by the way of London, along the great and populous roads, he hastened across the comparatively secluded counties of Salop, Hereford, Gloucester, Oxford, Berks, and Surrey, into the county of Sussex, leaving London sixteen miles to his left; and so truly modest was he become, that in this route horses were taken forward out of the several towns to be put to his carriage, lest the people should gaze upon him, and overpower him with their marks of respect and affection, while his horses were changing at the several inns in the country towns.

491. Very soon after his visit to Ireland he passed over to the continent, to visit his subjects in Hanover, which had been erected into a "kingdom"; though not intrinsically worth one half of the county of Kent, to which Hanover England has been sending more than a hundred thousand pounds a year, on an average, ever since the peace. The next year he visited his subjects in Scotland, it is supposed in consequence of the pressing entreaties of the Scotch nobility, a very large part of whom were, and always had been, upon the pension or sinecure list. The Scotch people received him dryly; and he returned apparently not very well pleased with his reception.

492. After this, the remainder of his life was spent in almost total seclusion from the eyes of the people, who were, however, daily informed, by the newspapers, of his dinner-parties at his

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cottage; of his rides about WINDSOR-park, in his pony-phaeton; of his fishing on "VIRGINIAWATER", which is a pond of about two or three acres in WINDSOR-park, made for the purpose of collecting water from the soak of the adjoin ing hill, in order to secure a supply to run down over some great stones, the whole to imitate the "falls of Niagara ", the whole body of the stream being hardly sufficient to turn the smallest of mills. In short, an eighteen gallon barrel would be a channel sufficiently spacious for this stream. The descriptions which the public were constantly receiving of these his important movements served, at any rate, to make them merry for a moment, amongst the miseries that the measures of his reign had inflicted. He had become enormously fat; being tall, and of a large frame, he made altogether an uncommonly huge mass; so that when "THE SOVEREIGN' was exhibited to the people as standing in a golden "gondola", catching a large minnow, by a golden hook suspended from a silver rod, with the Marchioness of CONYNGHAM, the noble Lord BLOOMFIELD, the Right Honourable Sir JOHN M'MAHON, and the Right Honourable Sir William KnigHTON, in ecstacies of admiration, while the Right Honourable Sir HERBERT TAYLOR was in the act of making a written record of the exploit; when the people read descriptions like this, or something of this character, they