FORE:The king had a stormy and rather perilous passage across the Channel. Mr. Freemantle sarcastically alludes to the feelings of the royal passenger in connection with this voyage:"The king in his journey home overtook Lord and Lady Harcourt, now the bosom friends of Lady Conyngham, stopped them, got out of his carriage, and sat with them for a quarter of an hour on the public road, recounting all his perilous adventures at sea, and flattering reception in Ireland. Lady Harcourt told me his pious acknowledgment for his great escape of being shipwrecked was quite edifying, and the very great change in his moral habits and religious feelings was quite astonishing, and all owing to Lady Conyngham." On his return to London, after a visit to Hanover, the king devoted himself to a life of seclusion for a considerable time, during which it appears that the Marchioness of Conyngham maintained an ascendency over him most damaging to his character and Government. She had not only made the royal favour tributary to the advancement of her own family, but she meddled in political affairs with mischievous effect. "Had it been confined to mere family connections," writes Robert Huish, "no voice, perhaps, would have been raised against it; but when the highest offices in the Church were bestowed on persons scarcely previously heard ofwhen political parties rose and fell, and Ministers were created and deposed to gratify the ambition of a femalethen the palace of the king appeared as if surrounded by some pestilential air. The old hereditary counsellors of the king avoided the Court, as alike fatal to private probity and public honour. The entrance to Windsor Castle was, as it were, hermetically sealed by the enchantress within to all but the favoured few. The privilege of the entre was curtailed to the very old friends of the king, and even the commonest domestics in the castle were constrained to submit to the control of the marchioness. The Court of George IV. certainly differed widely from that of Charles II., although the number and[221] reputation of their several mistresses were nearly the same in favour and character; but George IV. had no confiscations to confer on the instruments of his pleasures."In Germany, Frederick of Prussia was hard put to it. A fresh army of Russians, under General Soltikow, advanced to the Oder, and another army of Austrians, under Laudohn, advanced to form a junction with them. To prevent this, Frederick sent General Wedel to encounter the Russians, but he was defeated by them on the 23rd of July, with heavy loss. Frederick himself then hastened against them, but, before his arrival, the Austrians had joined Soltikow, making a united force of sixty thousand, which Frederick attacked, on the 12th of August, with forty-eight thousand, at the village of Kunersdorf, close to Frankfort-on-the-Oder. At first he was successful; but, attempting to push his advantages, he was completely beaten, the whole of his army being killed or scattered to three thousand men. So completely did his ruin now seem accomplished, that, expecting the Russians, Austrians, Poles, Swedes, and Saxons to come down on him on all sides, he once more contemplated taking the poison that he still carried about him; wrote a letter to that effect to his Prime Minister, and directed the oath of allegiance to be taken to his nephew, and that his brother, Prince Henry, should be regent; but finding that the Russians, who had lost twenty thousand men, were actually drawing off, he again took courage, was soon at the head of thirty thousand men, and with these was hastening to the relief of Dresden, when he was paralysed by the news that General Finck, with twelve thousand men, had suffered himself to be surrounded at Maxen, and compelled to surrender. Despairing of relieving Dresden during this campaign, Frederick eventually took up his winter quarters at Freiberg, in Saxony, and employed himself in raising and drilling fresh soldiers; compelled, however, to pay his way by debasing both the Prussian coin, and the English gold which he received in subsidy, by a very large alloy.
8901 MARMORA ROAD,
GLASGOW, DO4 89GR.
FORE:On the 19th of August the new Parliament assembled. The Session was opened by commission; the Royal Speech, which was read by the Lord Chancellor, contained a paragraph referring to the duties affecting the productions of foreign countries, and suggesting for consideration the question whether the principle of protection was not carried to an extent injurious alike to the income of the State and the interests of the people; whether the Corn Laws did not aggravate the natural fluctuations of supply; and whether they did not embarrass trade, derange the currency, and by their operation diminish the comfort and increase the privations of the great body of the community. Here was a distinct enunciation of the principles of Free Trade in the Speech from the Throne, for which, of course, the Ministers were responsible. The Address in the House of Lords was moved by Earl Spencer, a decided Free Trader, and seconded by the Marquis of Clanricarde. The debate was relieved from nullity by the Duke of Wellington's testimony to the conduct of Lord Melbourne towards the Queen. The Duke said"He was willing to admit that the noble viscount had rendered the greatest possible service to her Majesty, in making her acquainted with the mode and policy of the government of this country, initiating her into the laws and spirit of the Constitution, independently of the performance of his duty as the servant of her Majesty's Crown; teaching her, in short, to preside over the destiny of this great country." The House divided, when it was found that there was a majority of 72 against the Government.Sir John Soane, who had been a pupil of Dance, Holland, and Sir William Chambers, introduced a more purely Greek style, and his achievements may be seen in Dulwich Gallery and Trinity Church, Marylebone. The most eminent disciples of this school were William Wilkins and Sir Robert Smirke. Wilkins was a servile copyist, and the National Gallery is the chief monument of his skill, or want of it. Sir Robert Smirke was of a higher order, and his erection of Covent Garden Theatre, the Mint, the Post Office, the College of Physicians, the law courts at Gloucester, Lowther Castle, etc., speak for themselves. Nash, the contemporary and successor of these architects, has left us abundance of his Gr?co-Romano-Italian medleys in the church in Langham Place, Regent's Park, and Buckingham Palace. The great merit of Nash was, that, like the brothers Adam, he gave us space, and showed, as in Regent's Park, what was needed for an immense metropolis. Towards the end[201] of the reign Gothic architecture was more cultivated, and one of Wyatt's last works was Ashridge House, in Buckinghamshire, a vast and stately Gothic pile, imposing in general effect, but far from pure in style. Still less so was Eaton Hall, in Cheshire, built by William Pordon; but the real Anglo-Gothic was now receiving the true development of its principles by the works of James Bentham, Carter, John Britton; and, finally, Thomas Rickman, in 1816, published his "Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of English Architecture," which placed these principles perspicuously before the public.
example@321.com