in his
estimate of Romilly's age. Romilly was sixty-one when he died. He was
one of the greatest legal and social reformers of his age. His father
was a Huguenot watchmaker who had settled in London, and the young
Samuel Romilly had only an imperfect education to begin with. By
intense study he became possessed of wide and varied culture. He
studied for the bar, became distinguished in Chancery practice, made
his way in public life, sat in the House of Commons for several years,
and finally represented Westminster. During successive visits to
France he had made the acquaintance of Diderot and D'Alembert, and
became the friend of Mirabeau. He won a noble fame by his persistent
endeavors to mitigate the cruelties of the criminal laws, to introduce
the principles of a free country into political prosecutions, to
abolish the odious spy system, and to put an end to slavery at home and
abroad. His name will be remembered forever in the history of
political and social reform.

The Houses of Death and of Birth were busy for the royal family in the
closing scenes of the King's tragedy. There had been very little
happiness for George the Third in his long reign and his longer life.
His childhood had been darkened by the shadow of a family feud that
seemed traditional in his line. His marriage, indeed, fortunate if
unromantic, the sequel of more than one unfortunate romance, gave him a
companion whose tastes were as simple, and whose purposes were as
upright as his own. But his private domesticity was not destined to be
less troubled than his public fortunes. The grim tradition asserted
{348} itself again for him whose childhood and manhood had been only
too devoted to the influence of his mother. Few of his children were a
cause of joy to him; some were a source of very poignant sorrow. He
might have known content in a private station under conditions better
fitted to strengthen his virtues and to lessen the force of his
defects. If Farmer George had really been but Farmer George, his
existence might tranquilly have followed the courses of the seasons
through a prosperous manhood to a peaceable old age. But the curse of
kingship was upon him very heavily, and his later years are very
pitiful in their loneliness and their pain. Of the course of events
about him he, in the awful visitation of his infirmities, had long been
unconscious. Blind and deaf and mad, he seems to have been haunted by
the ghastly fancy th