"There," she says to her father at
last, "I have kept it up for a long while; you may send it away now, I
am tired of it; mother [_i.e._ the Princess Caroline] has got some
better plaything for me." "What! are you tired already?" exclaims the
Regent. "Take another spell at it, or give me the whip." "No, no,"
replies Her Royal Highness; "you may take the top, but I'll keep the
whip." Behind her is a picture representing an orange falling with Cupid
headlong into space. The Regent was so incensed at his daughter's
refractoriness, that he went at once to Warwick House and dismissed all
her attendants, and never forgave the Duke of Sussex for his supposed
share in breaking off the connection. It was immediately after this
event that her mother, the Princess Caroline, contrary to the advice of
her friends and well-wishers, applied for permission to make that tour
on the Continent which, owing to her own obstinate folly and contempt
for the duties of her high station, was destined--as we shall afterwards
find--to end in such disastrous consequences to herself.

1812 1815. AMERICA AND ENGLAND.

In the course of the year 1812, England had become involved--scarcely
through any fault of her own--in a war with the United States of
America. The causes of difference were mainly due to the obnoxious
Orders in Council, which had been _forced_ upon us in consequence of the
Berlin and Milan Decrees of Napoleon. As an evidence, however, of our
own friendly intentions, it may be mentioned that the Regent had issued
a declaration on the 23rd of April, that if at any time the obnoxious
decrees should by _an authentic act be absolutely_ repealed, thenceforth
the Orders in Council of 7th January, 1807, and 26th April, 1809, should
be revoked; and the American representative, having, on the 20th of
May, transmitted to the English Court a copy of a French decree of the
20th of April, by which the decrees of Milan and Berlin were declared to
be no longer in force, _so far as American vessels were concerned_, the
Regent declared that, although he could not accept the terms of the
decree as satisfying the conditions of his own declaration of the 23rd
of April, yet, with the view of re-establishing friendly relations, _he
revoked_ the Orders in Council of 7th January, 1807, and April 26th,
1809, so far as regarded American vessels and American cargoes. Of this
repeal, be it observed, the United States Government took no notice, it
might be in