Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face.

8. Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the busy whisper, circling round,
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned;
Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault.

9. The village all declared how much he knew;
'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too;
Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,
And e'en the story ran that he could gauge.
In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill,
For e'en though vanquished he could argue still;
While words of learned length and thundering sound
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around;
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew
That one small head could carry all he knew.
But passed is all his fame: the very spot
Where many a time he triumphed is forgot.

LESSON LXVII.

GEORGE III. OF ENGLAND.

BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta in 1811, his father being in the service of the East India Company. At seven years of age he was sent to England, stopping on the way at St. Helena, where he saw the exile Napoleon. He was placed at the Charter-house School in London, and afterward went to Cambridge, but did not graduate. Having inherited a fortune, he at first devoted himself to art, and pursued his studies abroad for some years, when, having met with pecuniary losses, he relinquished art for literature. His first works of any note were The Paris Sketch Book, The Great Haggarty Diamond, The Irish Sketch Book, Jeams' Diary, The Yellow plush Papers, The Book of Snobs, From Cornhill to Cairo, and Mrs. Perkins' Ball. His reputation was of slow growth, and he first became popular through his inimitable sketches in Punch. Then followed those brilliant and entertaining novels, Vanity Fair, The History of Pendennis, The History of Henry Esmond, The Newcomes, The Virginians, and Lovel, the Widower. He wrote, also, a

great number of excellent Christmas stories. Equally charming are his Lectures on the English Humorists, and on The Four Georges. He visited the United States in 1856, and died December, 1863. The following is from The Four Georges.

I

HOLD old Johnson (and shall we not pardon James Bos

well some errors for embalming him for us?) to be the great supporter of the British monarchy and church during the last age-better than whole benches of bishops, better than Pitts, Norths, and the great Burke himself. Johnson had the ear of the nation; his immense authority reconciled it to loyalty, and shamed it out of irreligion. When George III. talked with him, and the people heard the great author's good opinion of the sovereign, whole generations rallied to the King. Johnson was revered as a sort of oracle; and the oracle declared for church and king.

2. What a humanity the old man had! He was a kindly partaker of all honest pleasures; a fierce foe to all sin, but a gentle enemy to all sinners. "What, boys, are you for a frolic?" he cries, when Topham Beauclerc comes and wakes him up at midnight: "I'm with you." And away he goes, tumbles on his homely old clothes, and trundles through Covent Garden with the young fellows. When he used to frequent Garrick's theatre, and had the "liberty of the scenes," he says, "All the actresses knew me, and dropped me a courtesy as they passed to the stage." That would make a pretty picture. It is a pretty picture, in my mind, of youth, folly, gayety, tenderly surveyed by wisdom's merciful,

pure eyes.

3. His mother's bigotry and hatred he inherited with the courageous obstinacy of his own race; but he was a firm believer where his fathers had been free-thinkers, and a true and fond supporter of the Church, of which he was the titular defender. Like other dull men, the King was all his life suspicious of superior people. He did not like Fox; he did not like Reynolds: he did not like Nelson, Chatham, Burke. He was testy at the idea of all innovations, and suspicious of all innovators. He loved mediocrites; Benjamin West was his favor

ite painter; Beattie was his poet. The king lamented, not without pathos, in his after life, that his education had been neglected.

4. He was a dull lad, brought up by narrow-minded people. The cleverest tutors in the world could have done little, probably, to expand that small intellect, though they might have improved his tastes, and taught his perceptions some generosity. But he admired as well as he could. There is little doubt that a letter, written by the little Princess Charlotte, of Mecklenburg Strelitz-a letter containing the most feeble commonplaces about the horrors of war, and the most trivial remarks on the blessings of peace, struck the young monarch greatly, and decided him upon selecting the young princess as the sharer of his throne.

5. They say the little princess who had written the fine letter about the horrors of war-a beautiful letter, without a single blot, for which she was to be rewarded, like the heroine of the old spelling-book story-was at play, one day, with some of her young companions, in the gardens of Strelitz, and that the young ladies' conversation was, strange to say, about husbands. "Who will take such a poor little princess as I?" said Charlotte to her friend, Ida von Bulow; at that very moment the postman's horn sounded, and Ida said, "Princess, there is the sweetheart!" And so it actually turned out. The postman brought letters from the splendid young king of all England, who said, "Princess, because you have written such a beautiful letter, which does credit to your head and heart, come and be queen of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and the true wife of your obedient servant, George!"

6. So she jumped for joy; and went upstairs and packed all her little trunks, and set off straightway for her kingdom in a beautiful yacht, with a harpischord on board for her to play upon, and around her a beautiful fleet, all covered with flags and streamers, and the distinguished Madame Auerbach

complimented her with an ode, a translation of which may be read in The Gentleman's Magazine to the present day :

Her gallant navy through the main
Now cleaves its liquid way.

There to their Queen a chosen train
Of nymphs due reverence pay.

Europa, when conveyed by Jove

To Crete's distinguished shore,
Greater attention scarce could prove,
Or be respected more.

7. They met, and they were married, and for years they led the happiest, simplest lives sure ever led by married couple. It is said the king winced when he first saw his homely little bride; but, however that may be, he was a true and faithful husband to her, as she was a faithful and loving wife. They had the simplest pleasures-the very mildest and simplest— little country dances, to which a dozen couple were invited, and where the honest king would stand up and dance for three hours at a time to one tune: after which delicious excitement, they would go to bed without any supper (the Court people grumbling at that absence of supper), and get up quite early the next morning, and perhaps the next night have another dance; or the queen would play on the spinet-she played pretty well, Haydn said-or the king would read to her a paper out of The Spectator, or perhaps one of Ogden's

sermons.

8. O Arcadia ! what a life it must have been! There used to be Sunday drawing-rooms at Court; but the young king stopped these, as he stopped all that godless gambling whereof we have made mention. Not that George was averse to any innocent pleasures, or pleasures which he thought innocent. He was a patron of the arts, after his fashion; kind and gracious to the artists whom he favored, and respectful to their calling. He wanted once to establish an Order of Minerva for literary and scientific characters; the Knights were to take rank after the Knights of the Bath, and to sport a straw

colored ribbon and a star of sixteen points. But there was such a row among the literati as to the persons who should be appointed, that the plan was given up, and Minerva and her star never came down amongst us.

9. He objected to painting St. Paul's, as Popish practice; accordingly, the most clumsy heathen sculptures decorate that edifice at present. It is fortunate that the paintings, too, were spared, for painting and drawing were wofully unsound at the close of the last century, and it is far better for our eyes to contemplate whitewash (when we turn them away from the clergyman) than to look at Opie's pitchy canvases, or Fuseli's livid monsters.

And yet there is one day in the year-a day when old George loved with all his heart to attend it-when I think St. Paul's presents the noblest sight in the whole world: when five thousand charity children, with cheeks like nosegays, and sweet, fresh voices, sing the hymn which makes every heart thrill with praise and happiness.

10. I have seen a hundred grand sights in the world-coronations, Parisian splendors, Crystal Palace openings, Pope's chapels with their processions of long-tailed cardinals and quavering choirs of fat soprani-but I think in all Christendom there is no such sight as Charity Children's day. As one looks at that beautiful multitude of innocents, as the first note strikes, indeed one may almost fancy that cherubs are singing.

Of church music the king was always very fond, showing skill in it both as a critic and as a performer. Many stories, mirthful and affecting, are told of his behavior at the concerts which he ordered. When he was blind and ill, he chose the music for the Ancient Concerts once, and the music and words which he selected were from "Samson Agonistes," and all had reference to his blindness, his captivity, and his affliction. He would beat time with his music-roll as they sang the anthem in the Chapel Royal. If the page below was talkative or inattentive, down would come the music-roll on the young scapegrace's powdered head.