ad suffered, and vengeance had revelled in the doom
of the beloved Kilmarnock. But the sins of the remorseless Cumberland
cried to Heaven. They were registered in the mind of a child. The boy
turned pale and trembled, and acknowledged that he thought his "uncle
Cumberland was going to kill him." The Duke shocked and deeply hurt,
referred to popular prejudice the impression which was the result of
crime.

Imperious, aspiring, independent, the grasping and able intellect of the
Duke soon imbibed a knowledge of affairs beyond his years. When scarcely
out of the nursery he loved the council chamber, and delighted in the
recitals of foreign wars. As he reached manhood, he affected a lofty and
philosophical coldness; a dangerous attribute in youth, and one which
either springs from a frigid disposition, or else infallibly contracts
the heart. But, in the case of the Duke of Cumberland, it concealed a
proud and selfish spirit, which could ill brook the superiority of his
elder brother, Frederic, Prince of Wales, or bear with temper the
popularity of another. When, in after years, his brother's death was
communicated to him, those jealous and disdainful feelings broke forth.
"It is a great blow to the country," he said, sarcastically; "but I
hope, in time, it will recover it." That want of faith in human nature,
of reverence for good motives, that absence of a generous confidence
which one can suppose strongly characterise the lost angels, were among
the many odious features in the character of this truly bad man. The
prevailing feeling of his mind was, contempt for everything and
everybody;--a contempt for renown;--a contempt, in after life, for
politics, which he conceived were below his attention; a contempt for
women, whom he lowered by a sort of preference consistent with the rest
of his coarse character, but whose modest virtues he mistrusted. With
this affectation of superiority, the Duke combined the littleness of
envy. When he had attained the height of his popularity, his
satisfaction was tarnished by the reputation of Admiral Vernon, who was
the idol of the public. As a General, his acknowledged and eminent
qualities were sullied by the German puerilities of an exact attention
to military trifles; any deficiency in etiquette was punished like a
crime: the formation of a new pattern of spatterdashes was treated as an
important event. Nor was this all. He introduced into an army of
Englishmen the German notions of mili