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House, before the Princess left it, solemnly recording her resolution never to marry the Prince of Orange, to which we find no allusion elsewhere.

Leaving out the contradiction of the statement in the 'Life of Lord Eldon' (on which more presently), it will be seen that his Lordship commences by declaring that it is not true that the Prince and Bishop went to see the Princess at Warwick House at all.' This assertion is sufficient of itself to show the extreme defectiveness of his Lordship's memory. The fact that they did go to Warwick House is stated in all the narratives of the time, and has now received confirmation, if any such had been needed, from Miss Knight's plain narrative. We have also seen another authentic version of the occurrences at Warwick House, slightly differing from Miss Knight's, but only by such minute discrepancies as occur every day between straightforward witnesses. After the Princess's first impetuous declaration that she would go to her mother,' she and the one or two friends who were endeavouring to calm her mind

'were disturbed by the Bishop knocking loudly at the door of her bedroom; and the Princess, thinking that it was her father come to take her away, rushed through the passage which led to Miss Knight's apartment (which also communicated with the back stairs). Miss Mercer, on this, retreated to finish dressing in Mrs. Lewis's room. There was a window in this room which overlooked Warwick Lane; and the first suspicion which those in the room had of the Princess's flight was from hearing some persons who were working in the street say, "Why, sure it is the Princess who has run up the lane!" The Princess had her bonnet on long before her interview with the Regent. Her flight was sudden and unpremeditated, under the influence of terror.'

The next statement of Lord Brougham on which we are forced to comment is his description of the 'dinner at Connaught Place,' and of the events which there took place. It would appear from this that the party,' including Mr. Brougham himself, sat down to that jocose meal, Lord Eldon, Lord Ellenborough, and other dignitaries of state, remaining outside, in their 'hackney-coaches,' not even asked in-doors, while the Princess Charlotte-the terrified young creature who had just fled thither for protection against what her imagination represented as a frightful persecution-amused herself, and the rest of the company, by being extremely facetious at the expense of the dignitaries aforesaid! Such a story, if true, would scarcely increase our respect for the Princess, who, young as she was, would have been guilty of strangely indecorous trifling at such a moment, in a party of very unwonted associates. But apparently his Lordship's playful memory

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has here again deceived him. Unless we are very much misinformed, Mr. Brougham was not one of the guests at that dinner' at all. A hasty meal had been served in a small room adjoining the drawing-room, to which none sat down except the Princess of Wales, Princess Charlotte, Lady Charlotte Lindsay, and Miss Mercer. Mr. Brougham-sent for as a legal adviser, not a guest -arrived while they were at table. The supposed concourse of hackney-coaches in front of the house during the dinner seems to be simply a melodramatic incident. Lords Eldon and Ellenborough very certainly were not there. We have seen that Miss Knight went to Connaught Place some time after the Princess's flight; found the above-named ladies there, and Mr. Brougham with them; waited there for some time for an answer from the Bishop of Salisbury to certain proposals; and then went to Carlton House, where she found the Chancellor and Lord Ellenborough 'seated at each end of a long table.' By this time it must have been late at night; and as the two legal sages were at Carlton House at the two ends of a long table, it is quite clear they were not, as Lord Brougham supposes, sitting as butts for his and the Princess Charlotte's pleasantries in front of Connaught 'Terrace,' as his Lordship calls it by the figure prolepsis. Miss Knight goes on to say, 'it was two in the morning before the Duke of York arrived to take her (the Princess) away. I afterwards heard from the Duke of Sussex that a hackney-coach followed him (the Duke of York), with the Chancellor and two other lawyers in it.' Lord Eldon, therefore, did not arrive until the very end of the little drama; and then, no doubt, took place the scene between him and the Princess, which Mr. Twiss makes him describe in a style more graphical than refined. Except to Lord Brougham-who doubtless believes that his predecessor had an innate propensity for unnecessary lying-it would have seemed strange that Lord Eldon or his biographer should go out of the way to invent a false account of an indifferent occurrence, in which, moreover, the Chancellor does not play a very dignified part. But we have other authority for saying that Lord Eldon's story is simply true.

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The next point in Lord Brougham's narrative on which commentary becomes indispensable is not quite so much de minimis as those we have referred to. 'Mr. Brougham,' he says, sent for by the young Princess, as a person she had already often consulted. Mr. Brougham, as all the world knows, was the legal and partly the political adviser of her mother, the Princess of Wales. Miss Knight, we have seen, tells quite a different story, namely, that it was the Princess of Wales herself who had sent for Mr. Brougham,' and that before her mother's arrival Princess Charlotte

Now we need not

Charlotte had sent for the Duke of Sussex.' say that on the question who sent for him, mother or daughter, Lord Brougham's own direct statement ought to be a very different authority from Miss Knight's hearsay. But it is impossible not to remark how signally his Lordship's memory has failed him as to other parts of this transaction. It is certainly strange-passing strange-that though poor Princess Charlotte could not well have had many 'secrets' from the prying eyes at Warwick House, neither its inmates nor any one else except his Lordship himself seem to have been the least aware that she had consulted him often, or consulted him at all. On one occasion, in April, 1814, she wrote a letter to the Prince Regent, touching her proposed marriage, which made the Prince remark to Miss Knight that it was supposed Princess Charlotte must have legal advisers, as her letters were not those of a woman. 'I said that he must recollect she had gone through a course of study on the laws of England, and by his own observation to me one evening at Carlton House was allowed to be mistress of the subject. He smiled, and said Her Royal Highness turned his arms against himself.'—(Vol. i., P. 286.) And we know that those who were far nearer to her heart than Miss Knight believed that she had no legal adviser at all.' Thus much must be said that if it is true that the young Princess, without the knowledge of her own closest intimates, was wont to consult her mother's professional counsellor and her father's ablest political enemy, it shows, better than any other evidence, the evil influence attained over her by that mother, shows an amount of duplicity on her own part for which we should not have been prepared, and justifies in substance, if not in point of taste and judgment, the measures which that father adopted or threatened towards her.

As to the not very important question whose influence it was which prevailed on the young Princess to return to her father, the actors in the scene seem all to disagree, partly from that natural tendency which every one has on such occasions to represent himself as the first performer. The Duke of Buckingham says (Memoirs of the Court of England under the Regency) that it was the Princess of Wales who induced her daughter to go back, being for her own part merely anxious to encounter no obstacles to her project for leaving the country. 'It is certain,' says Miss Knight, pointedly, that on the fatal morning it struck me that the Princess of Wales was more

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* Lord Brougham, as we have seen, says that he brought the Duke of Sussex. Vol. 111.-No. 221. anxious

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anxious for the removal of Princess Charlotte out of her house than the Prince was to get her into his.' Lord Eldon evidently thought that he prevailed on the Princess to leave, through the awful threat that he and Lord Ellenborough would stay with her till she did. The Duke of Sussex told Sir Samuel Romilly that he and Brougham persuaded her to go to Carlton House.'('Diary of Sir Samuel Romilly,' iii., 145.) Lord Brougham himself, as we see from his narrative, has no doubt that alone he did it.' Evidently all the parties pulled together with a hearty goodwill, though from a singular variety of motives; and their united efforts overcame the resolution of an unhappy child, probably more frightened than obstinate.

We should be extremely reluctant, in conclusion, to disturb the picturesque effect of that well-told private scene at the window between the Princess and her adviser which ends Lord Brougham's narrative, and which has become, as it were, a part of received English history. Very few men would have had the presence of mind and readiness of wit to address so rhetorical an argument to an agitated young Princess at such a moment; but no one will deny that the hero of the tale might have been one of those few. Nevertheless, there are some details which our prosaic minds find a difficulty in understanding. The Westminster election' gave occasion for the pointed warning; but there was no Westminster election that day: it took place on Saturday the 16th, and the preliminary Palace Yard meeting had been on Monday the 11th. The day was beginning to break' is an essential feature in the composition—that is, it was past three o'clock. The Princess then consented; but before she would go, a carriage had to be sent for from Connaught Place to Carlton House, made ready there, and brought back to Connaught House again. At this rate, the Princess could scarcely have reached her father's before it was broad daylight and the streets filling-a singular circumstance, which no contemporary mentions. Now Miss Knight says 'it was two in the morning before the Duke of York arrived to take her away,' and implies that she did not stay long afterwards. Not a word about sending for a carriage; the Duke had evidently brought one. The Morning Chronicle' says, 'At a little past three Her Royal Highness was conveyed to Carlton House.' After this, one may fairly ask with Sir Walter Raleigh, what is history?' Had we an account of some event of antiquity of

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The Edinburgh Reviewer says, ' returned to Warwick House between four and five o'clock.' We know that she never returned to Warwick House at all. the

the same apparent authenticity with Lord Brougham's narrative of that in which he took part at Connaught House, what Niebuhr would venture to question it? and yet, as soon as another eye-witness is evoked from the shades, and the newspapers of the day are consulted, they flatly and irreconcileably contradict him!

One question, however, of more than mere historical curiosity forces itself on the reader of this little domestic novellette. Why were all parties-the Duke of Sussex and Mr. Brougham, quite as much as the Duke of York and Lord Eldon-so.vehemently anxious to get the Princess Charlotte, despite her tears and sufferings, to Carlton House immediately? The night was far spent, or rather it was already morning. After many hours of fatigue and agitation, what more natural than that she should repose a few hours longer under the roof of her own mother? Why could not this be effected without entrenching on her father's right to control her movements? There is no reason for supposing that the Regent would, on his own account, have objected to so trifling an indulgence. Such unnecessary cruelty would have been inconsistent with the rest of his conduct, which, as we have said, was in all this matter rather arbitrary and injudicious than barbarous. And if he had insisted on this point, what a fine opportunity for his opponents to make capital' out of such a display of senseless tyranny! But, in truth, the reader will not have forgotten Miss Knight's shrewd hint, that the mother was far more anxious to get rid of the daughter than the father to get her back. And it is clear that he must have been prepared for the contingency of her remaining at Connaught House that night; for we have seen that Miss Knight was allowed to take thither her maid and night things.' Unfortunately the real reason for this precipitancy seems plain enough. Every man in that house well knew every one, probably, except the young Princess herself and Miss Mercer knew-that Connaught House was not a residence in which the heiress of the Crown could with propriety remain for a single night. She could not be exposed to encounter the Sapios' and the rest of the goodly society whose doings are chronicled in Lady Charlotte Bury's pages; and her mother's character and temper afforded no guarantee that she should be spared a single item of such disgrace. Such was doubtless the motive which acted, and very properly acted, on the Princess of Wales's own advisers; and yet those very advisers were ready to take the first occasion afterwards of reiterating their conviction of that lady's absolute innocence, and the causeless jealousy of her illustrious persecutor!

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