sent back to his ship, the Warspite. On this occasion it
was noticed that he had "much improved in personal appearance and grown
quite corpulent;" and so the boy Jones passed out of history, though
we catch one last glimpse of him in 1844 falling overboard in the
night between Tunis and Algiers. He was fished up again; but it was
conjectured--as one of the Warspite's officers explained in a letter
to The Times--that his fall had not been accidental, but that he
had deliberately jumped into the Mediterranean in order to "see the
life-buoy light burning." Of a boy with such a record, what else could
be supposed?

But discomfort and alarm were not the only results of the mismanagement
of the household; the waste, extravagance, and peculation that also
flowed from it were immeasurable. There were preposterous perquisites
and malpractices of every kind. It was, for instance, an ancient and
immutable rule that a candle that had once been lighted should never be
lighted again; what happened to the old candles, nobody knew. Again, the
Prince, examining the accounts, was puzzled by a weekly expenditure of
thirty-five shillings on "Red Room Wine." He enquired into the matter,
and after great difficulty discovered that in the time of George III
a room in Windsor Castle with red hangings had once been used as a
guard-room, and that five shillings a day had been allowed to provide
wine for the officers. The guard had long since been moved elsewhere,
but the payment for wine in the Red Room continued, the money being
received by a half-pay officer who held the sinecure position of
under-butler.

After much laborious investigation, and a stiff struggle with the
multitude of vested interests which had been brought into being by long
years of neglect, the Prince succeeded in effecting a complete reform.
The various conflicting authorities were induced to resign their powers
into the hands of a single official, the Master of the Household, who
became responsible for the entire management of the royal palaces. Great
economies were made, and the whole crowd of venerable abuses was swept
away. Among others, the unlucky half-pay officer of the Red Room was,
much to his surprise, given the choice of relinquishing his weekly
emolument or of performing the duties of an under-butler. Even the
irregularities among the footmen, etc., were greatly diminished. There
were outcries and complaints; the Prince was accused of meddling, of
injustice, an