like a madman. The absurdity of his conduct, when his princess was about to be confined of her first child, increased the disgust which his father had conceived towards him, after Pulteney's ill-judged motion for increasing the heir-apparent's income from the civil list to £100,000 per annum. This was justly regarded as an infringement on the king's prerogative, and as such resented by him. The prince was ordered to quit St James's palace as soon as the princess could be removed; in consequence of which mandate, he retired to Norfolk house, where he formed a court for himself out of the opposition leaders. On the resignation of Sir Robert Walpole, the prince's party came into power, and a show of reconciliation was for some time kept up betwixt the king and the heir-apparent, but it did not last long.

The duke of Cumberland was the king's favourite son, and an object of most unmerited dislike to his worthless brother. His sentiments, however, were imbibed by the princess-dowager, and by her carefully instilled into the mind of her son. In this fact, we have the principal cause of the disgraceful dissensions which followed the death of Mr Pelham.

Prince Frederick died suddenly on the 20th of March, 1751. Soon after his decease, the following anonymous lines were proposed for his epitaph :

"Here lies Fred,

Who was alive, and is dead.

Had it been his father,

I had much rather;

Had it been his brother,

Still better than another;

Had it been his sister,

No one would have miss'd her;

Had it been the whole generation,

Still better for the nation;

But since 'tis only Fred,

Who was alive, and is dead,
There's no more to be said !"

Walpole says, his chief passion was women; and that, like the taste of his family, beauty did not seem to be much regarded in his amours. It appears that he was desirous of acquiring a military reputation during the rebellion of 1745, and that he applied for a military appointment at that time, but was refused. He found means, however, to gratify his warlike taste in a very innocent way. During the siege of Carlisle, he caused a representation, in paste, of its citadel, to be placed on the table with the dessert, which his royal-highness, at the head of the maids of honour, bombarded gallantly with sugar-plumbs! The anecdote may remind some of our readers of a certain exhibition of tiny vessels of war, which took place on the Serpentine river, several years ago, at the suggestion of an illustrious descendant of Prince Frederick. The prince was not without a certain affectation of literary taste. He expressed himself gratified with the 'Rambler,' and offered to take the author under his patronage; he presented Tindal with a gold medal; he honoured Pope with a complimentary visit; he sent the author of 'Leonidas' a £500 note; and he is even said to have actually written a book himself, called 'The History of Prince Titi,' which appeared in 1736. The manuscript of this work, in the prince's hand-writing, is reported to have been found amongst the papers of Ralph the historian.

William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland,

BORN A. D. 1721.-died a. D. 1765.

THIS prince, the third son of George II. and Queen Caroline, was born on the 15th of April, 1721. He gave early indications of considerable activity of intellect, and a predilection for a military life. In 1743 he made his first campaign in Germany. He was present, with his father, at the battle of Dettingen, and behaved with great gallantry on that occasion: when the earl of Stair resigned his command in the Netherlands, the duke of Cumberland, though scarcely twenty-four years old, and utterly destitute of experience, was placed at the head of the British and Hanoverian army. In the beginning of the campaign of 1744, Marshal Saxe, the French general, having invested Tournay, the allies determined on attempting its relief. The French were posted behind the village of Fontenoy on some eminences which commanded the approach to their lines. The British infantry, having formed a kind of close square, threw themselves on the centre of the enemy's lines; but after six hours of heroic effort, during all which time they were exposed to a determined resistance in front, and a heavy flanking fire, they were compelled to retire, leaving 12,000 men on the field.

Soon after the landing of Prince Charles Edward Stuart in Scotland, the duke of Cumberland arrived from the continent, with some regiments of dragoons and infantry. In this campaign, the details of which will be narrated in the next memoir, the duke won more laurels than he was destined ever to reap in Flanders; but he sullied them by his ferocity, and the unrelenting cruelty which he exhibited towards men, whose heroism at least should have won them the respect of a soldier. It was fortunate for the duke's fame, that his predecessors in the conduct of this brief domestic campaign were such imbeciles as they proved themselves to be. His military resources-and be undoubtedly possessed considerable military talent-were thus displayed to the best advantage, and he was raised at once by a grateful public, saved from the horrors of a civil war, to the very pinnacle of military glory. Parliament conferred on him a substantial mark of its approbation by increasing his allowance of £15,000 per annum to £40,000. He continued for a long period the popular idol, though his good fortune deserted him again on his return to Flanders, where the French carried every thing before them.

In 1751, he incurred some odium, on account of his project for improving the discipline of the British soldiers, by the introduction of a severer military code. In his amended mutiny-bill, the penalty of death, says Walpole, came over as often as the curses in the commination on Ash-Wednesday. By this ill-judged severity, and the want of feeling which he displayed on the death of his brother Frederick, the duke became so unpopular, that the idea of his ever becoming regent was received with general alarm; and the king himself seems to have participated in the public feeling. The duke felt so mortified at the dowager-princess of Wales being nominated regent, in the event of a minority, that he declared to his friends that "he now felt his own

insignificance, and wished the name of William could be blotted out of the English annals."

In 1757, the French having made an irruption into Germany, and threatened Hanover, his royal highness reluctantly undertook the command-in-chief in Germany. The French, under Marshal D'Etrées, were allowed successively to cross the Rhine and the Weser unopposed; and the duke retired before them, until he was driven into a position where he could neither procure provisions nor attack the enemy with any hope of success. In this situation he was compelled to capitulate; and a convention was signed at Closter-Seven, by which the electorate of Hanover was yielded to the French. Walpole asserts that the duke, notwithstanding the unfortunate issue of this campaign, evinced consummate military skill in conducting it. We suspect there are few who will allow Walpole's opinion on this point to outweigh the evidence of skill arising from the issue of the campaign itself; but there is one point which Walpole clearly establishes on behalf of the duke, namely, that his conduct was dignified, and in all respects worthy of a great mind, when disowned by his father for the unfortunate convention of Closter-Seven.

The duke, after these events, retired altogether from public life. He died suddenly on the 31st of October, 1765.

Charles Edward Stuart.

BORN A. D. 1720.-DIED A. D. 1788.

CHARLES EDWARD, eldest son of James Stuart, by Maria Clemen tina, was born at Rome, on the 30th of November, 1720. The history of the Stuart family is a singular one. Lord Hailes declares himself unable to trace their origin. They were probably a wealthy and powerful Norman family, who derived the name by which they are now known, from their office as stewards of Scotland. After they reached the throne by marriage, their course may be traced in history by the peculiar difficulties and sorrows which pressed so heavily upon all the race, but were seen most distinctly in the fortunes of Mary and her grandson Charles. No doubt there was much to condemn in their personal characters, and their maxims of government were such as never could be tolerated in a nation having the least pretension to be called free; still, we can hardly refuse our sympathy to their discrowned heads,' as we trace their course from the rough mountains of the north to the sunny plains of Italy, where it ended ingloriously at last.

Nothing could be more natural than that the young chevalier, as he was called, should consider himself the rightful heir to the English throne, a right which had been admitted by the nation itself for more than one generation, and which many lofty minds believed in so firmly that they were willing to die in defence of it. With these feelings he eagerly grasped at the overtures which were made to him, towards the close of 1743, by the French government, for the invasion of Britain. Notwithstanding the failure of the plans of the French cabinet, the prince still cherished the idea of regaining his ancestral throne by force