The last was he whose thunder slew The Titan race, a rebel crew, In impious league their king defied. George. O! I know who they are that he means by the rebel crew: he means the Highlanders; but he should not have spoken so hardly of them; for though I dare say George I. was a better king than James would have been, still those Scotch Highlanders were fine brave fellows, and worth all those English Whigs and Tories put together. CHAPTER XLI. GEORGE 11. [Years after Christ, 1727-1760.] An officer and serjeant of the reign of George the First. THE news of the sudden death of George I. reached London June 14, and George II. was proclaimed the next day. He was in the fortyfifth year of his age. In his person he was rather below the middle height, well shaped, and upright. His complexion was fair, his nose aquiline, and his eyes remarkably prominent. His abilities were inferior to those of his father, and his temper hasty. He was simple in all his tastes and habits, and was singularly methodical. His strongest feeling, and that which more than any other governed his conduct, was his preference of Hanover to England, -a feeling that ought not, perhaps, to be blamed as a moral fault, though it was to be lamented as a great political error in a king of England. His queen united brilliant beauty to a strong understanding and great goodness of heart. She, however, is said to have interfered more than was judicious in the political jealousies and intrigues of the court.-When George II. came to the throne, he had two sons: Frederick, the eldest, was twenty years old; William, afterwards duke of Cumberland, was only six years old. He had also four daughters, Anne, Amelia, Caroline, and Mary :-another daughter, Louisa, was born some years afterwards. The new king found the country in a state of great tranquillity; and little occurred for many years to disturb it, except a riot at Edinburgh, in which the mob took the execution of justice into their own hands, broke open the prison or Tolbooth, and seized and hanged a man of the name of Porteous, who had been confined there for shooting some smugglers. In 1736 the prince of Wales married the princess of Saxe-Gotha.—In 1737 the queen died, and the king's grief, for her loss was sincere and excessive, though during her life he had not always treated her with the tenderness she merited. In the same year a war broke out between England and Spain; and admiral Vernon took Portobello, a Spanish settlement on the isthmus of Darien. The winter of 1740 was remarkable for the most severe frost that had ever been known in England. It began at Christmas, and lasted till the latter end of February. The Thames was so strongly frozen over, that tents and booths were raised upon it, and various sports were exhibited on the ice for the amusement of the populace. But these amusements could not divert the poor from the feeling of the privations they suffered from the continuance of the severe weather. The watermen and fishermen were thrown out of work; and coals and provisions of all kinds became so dear, that if it had not been for the charity of the rich, many persons must have perished through hunger and cold. About this time the peace of the continent was disturbed by a contest for the imperial throne. The emperor Charles VI. (the same who when archduke had nearly acquired, through lord Peterborough's valour, the crown of Spain) died, leaving an only daughter, Maria Theresa, married to prince Francis of Lorraine. The claim of Maria Theresa was disputed by the elector of Bavaria; and nearly all Europe entered into the quarrel. The king of France took the part of the elector of Bavaria. The king of England engaged on the side of Maria Theresa, and sent to the continent an army of 16,000 men, under lord Stair, which was afterwards increased by an equal number of Hanoverians. This army was encamped at Hoech on the river Maine; and on June 9, 1743, was joined by the king and his son the duke of Cumberland, who on their arrival found it in a perilous situation. The French had 60,000 men, under the duke de Noailles, encamped on the opposite side of the river, who watched all its motions, and cut off all its supplies. The king, finding that there was an absolute necessity to remove the army to a more advantageous position, broke up his camp, and commenced a retreat; but when he advanced near the village of Dettingen, he perceived that a part of the French army had crossed the river, and now stood in front of him to oppose his farther progress. The king's army was confined in a narrow plain, bounded on the right by hills and woods; and on the left by the river, on the opposite banks of which the French had erected batteries. To retreat would have been no less hazardous than to advance: but fortunately there lay a narrow pass, with a morass in the middle, between the king and the opposing French army; and the French, rushing impetuously down this defile, were repulsed with so much firmness that, after a short but fierce conflict, they were obliged to repass the river with the loss of 5,000 men. The victors lost 2,000 men in this action, and the duke of Cumberland was wounded in the leg. The king exposed himself during the whole time to the fire of the cannon and musquetry, riding along the lines with his sword drawn, and |