te him in popular favor. "My God!" she exclaimed, "popularity
always makes me sick; but Fritz's popularity makes me vomit." People
told her that the prince and those around him talked of the King's
being cast away "with the same _sang-froid_ as you would talk of a
coach being overturned." She said she had been told that Frederick
strutted about as if he were already King. But she added, "He is such
an ass that one cannot tell what he thinks; and yet he is not so great
a fool as you take him for, neither." The Princess Caroline vowed that
if the worst were to prove true, she would run out of the house _au
grand galop_. Walpole described the prince to Hervey as "a poor, weak,
irresolute, false, lying, dishonest, contemptible wretch," and asked,
"What is to become of this divided family and this divided country?"
It is something of a relief to find that there was in one mind at least
a thought of what might happen to the country.

We have to take all these pictures of Frederick on {72} trust--on the
faith of the father who loathed him, of the mother who detested and
despised him, of the brothers and sisters who shrank away from him, of
the minister who could not find words enough to express his hatred and
contempt for him. Of course the mere fact that father and mother,
brothers and sisters, felt thus towards the prince is terrible
testimony against him. But there does not seem much in his conduct, at
least in his public conduct, during this crisis, which might not bear a
favorable interpretation. He might have given his dinners, as the
Queen held her public drawing-rooms, for the purpose of preventing the
spread of an alarm. No doubt the entertainment to the Lord Mayor and
aldermen had been long arranged; and the prince may have thought it
would be unwise to put it off at such a moment. Every report was
believed against him. A fire broke out at the Temple, and the prince
went down and stayed all night, giving directions and taking the
control of the work for the putting out of the flames. His exertions
undoubtedly helped to save the Temple from destruction; and he became
for the time a hero with the populace. It was reported to Caroline
that either the prince himself or some of his friends were going about
saying that the crowd on the night of the fire kept crying out, "Crown
him! crown him!"

[Sidenote: 1737--Monarchy a prosaic institution]

So far as the alarm of the Queen and Walpole had to do with the