his The fact was, he felt distressing grief, but was at a loss for words to describe the choking, depressing sensation. A few days after the burial of his father, he was formally created Prince of Wales-the order of the Garter had been previously conferred on him-and before the summer had passed away, an act was passed, settling the regency of the kingdom on the Princess, his mother, in case the crown devolved to him before he was of age. This bill was, however, rendered needless by the King, gouty and infirm as he was, living on till the year 1760, when, on the twenty-fifth of October, he was, in a manner, suddenly and unexpectedly seized with the agonies of death. He had risen as usual, drank his chocolate, called page, and inquired about the wind, as if anxious for the arrival of the foreign mails. He then said he would take a walk in the garden, and the page left the room, but immediately afterwards heard the sound of a heavy fall, and hastily returning, found the King lying on the floor with a deep gash on his right temple and cheek, cut, it was supposed, by the edge of a bureau, against which he fell. The death-stricken monarch looked up into the face of the page, gasped out, "Call Amelia!" and then, with a rattling gurgle in the throat, expired. The attendants placed the body upon the bed, and the moment afterwards the Princess, who had been sent for hurriedly, entered the apartment, rushed to the bed-side, and being purblind and hard of hearing, leaned over it in the belief that her father was speaking to her in a low voice. When she found that he was to all appearances dead, the colour left her cheeks, her lips quivered, and tears gushed from her eyes. But with great presence of mind she despatched one messenger for medical aid, and another to the Prince of Wales, at Kew. The surgeons and phy sicians instantly arrived, and endeavoured to bleed the body, but without effect; the right ventricle of the heart was ruptured, and George II. had died, like his bitterly-hated son, Prince Frederick, without priestly aid or religious consolation. Horace Walpole thus alludes to the death and bequeathments of George II. "I am not gone to Houghton, you see; my Lord Oxford is come to town, and I have persuaded him to stay and perform decencies. King George II. is dead, richer than Sir Robert Brown, though perhaps not so rich as my Lord Hardwicke. He has left £50,000 between the Duke, Emily, and Mary: the Duke has given up his share. To Lady Yarmouth, a cabinet with the contents; they call it £11,000. By a German deed he gives the Duke to the value of £180,000, placed on mortgages not immediately recoverable. He had once given him twice as much more, then revoked it, and at last excused the revocation on pretence of the expenses of the war, but owns he was the best son that ever lived, and had never offended him -a pretty strong comment on the affair of Closterseven. He gives him, besides, all his jewels in England, but had removed all his best to Hanover, which he makes crown jewels; and his successor residuary legatee. The Duke, too, has some uncounted cabinets. My Lady Suffolk has given me a particular of his jewels, which plainly amount to £150,000. It happened oddly to my Lady Suffolk, two days before he died she went to make a visit at Kensington: not knowing of the review, she found herself hemmed in by coaches, and was close to him whom she had not seen for so many years, and to my Lady Yarmouth, but they did not know her; it struck her, and made her very sensible to his death.' The remains of George II., who expired at the age of seventy-seven, were interred in Henry VII.'s Chapel, Westminster Abbey, by the side of his consort, Queen Caroline, on the eleventh of November, 1760. The funeral is thus graphically described by Horace Walpole: "Do you know I had the curiosity to have served as well for a nuptial. The go to the burying t'other night? I had real serious part was the figure of the never seen a royal funeral; nay, I Duke of Cumberland, heightened by a walked as a rag of quality, which I fan- thousand melancholy circumstances; he cied would be, and so it was, the easiest had a dark-brown Adonis and a cloak of way of seeing it. It is absolutely a black cloth, with a train of five yards. noble sight; the Prince's chamber hung Attending the funeral could not be pleawith purple and a quantity of silver sant; his leg extremely bad, yet forced lamps, the coffin under a canopy of to stand upon it near two hours, his face purple velvet, and six vast chandeliers bloated and distorted with his late paof silver on high stands, had a very ralytic stroke, which has affected, too, good effect. The ambassador from one of his eyes, and placed over the Tripoli and his son were carried to see mouth of the vault into which, in all that chamber. The procession through a probability, he must so soon descend― line of foot guards, every seventh man think how unpleasant a situation!-he bearing a torch, the horse guards lining bore it all with a firm and unaffected the outsides, their officers with drawn countenance. This grave scene was sabres and crape sashes, on horseback, fully contrasted by the burlesque Duke the drums muffled, the fifes, bells toll- of Newcastle; he fell into a fit of crying, and minute-guns all this was ing the moment he came into the chapel, very solemn; but the charm was the en- and flung himself back into a stall, the trance of the abbey, where we were re- archbishop hovering over him with a ceived by the dean and chapter in rich smelling-bottle; but in two minutes his robes, the choir and alms-men bearing curiosity got the better of his hypocrisy, torches, the whole abbey so illuminated, and he ran about the chapel with his that one saw it to better advantage than glass to spy who was or was not there, by day, the tombs, long aisles, and fret- spying with one hand and mopping his ted roof, all appearing distinctly and eyes with the other; then returned the with the happiest chiaro-scuro; there fear of catching cold, and the Duke of wanted nothing but incense, and little | Cumberland, who was sinking with heat, chapels here and there, with priests say- felt himself weighed down, and turning ing mass for the repose of the defunct; round, found it was the Duke of Newyet one could not complain of its not castle standing upon his train, to avoid being catholic enough. I had been in the chill of the marble. It was very dread of being coupled with some boy theatric to look down into the vault of ten years old; but the heralds were where the coffins lay, attended by not very accurate, and I walked with mourners with lights. Clavering, the George Grenville, taller and older, to groom of the bedchamber, refused to sit keep me in countenance. When we up with the body, and was dismissed by came to the Chapel of Henry VII., all the King's order." solemnity and decorum ceased, no order was observed, people sat or stood where they could or would, the yeomen of the guard were crying out for help, oppressed by the immense weight of the coffin. The bishop read sadly, and blundered in the prayers; the fine chapter Man that is born of woman,' was chaunted, not read, and the anthem, besides being immeasurably tedious, would Such was the funeral of George II., a King whose abilities were scarcely above mediocrity, whose reign was decidedly prosperous, and whose death, observes Walpole, "was most felicitous to himself, being without a pang, without tasting a reverse, and when his sight and hearing were so nearly extinguished, that any prolongation could but have swelled to calamities." |