h her.

'This answer no sooner reached Britain, than the whole nation was
transported with joy. Nothing was heard, on all sides, but the sounds of
feasting and revelry--except the chinking of money as it was paid in
by the people to the collector of the royal treasures, to defray the
expenses of the happy ceremony. It was upon this occasion that King Lud,
seated on the top of his throne in full council, rose, in the exuberance
of his feelings, and commanded the lord chief justice to order in the
richest wines and the court minstrels--an act of graciousness which has
been, through the ignorance of traditionary historians, attributed to
King Cole, in those celebrated lines in which his Majesty is represented
as

Calling for his pipe, and calling for his pot,
And calling for his fiddlers three.

Which is an obvious injustice to the memory of King Lud, and a dishonest
exaltation of the virtues of King Cole.

'But, in the midst of all this festivity and rejoicing, there was one
individual present, who tasted not when the sparkling wines were poured
forth, and who danced not, when the minstrels played. This was no other
than Prince Bladud himself, in honour of whose happiness a whole
people were, at that very moment, straining alike their throats and
purse-strings. The truth was, that the prince, forgetting the undoubted
right of the minister for foreign affairs to fall in love on his behalf,
had, contrary to every precedent of policy and diplomacy, already fallen
in love on his own account, and privately contracted himself unto the
fair daughter of a noble Athenian.

'Here we have a striking example of one of the manifold advantages of
civilisation and refinement. If the prince had lived in later days, he
might at once have married the object of his father's choice, and then
set himself seriously to work, to relieve himself of the burden which
rested heavily upon him. He might have endeavoured to break her heart by
a systematic course of insult and neglect; or, if the spirit of her sex,
and a proud consciousness of her many wrongs had upheld her under this
ill-treatment, he might have sought to take her life, and so get rid of
her effectually. But neither mode of relief suggested itself to Prince
Bladud; so he solicited a private audience, and told his father.

'it is an old prerogative of kings to govern everything but their
passions. King Lud flew into a frightful rage, tossed his crown up to
the ceiling,