oads by which coaches could
approach the house: 'one,' as the famous John, Lord Hervey, wrote to his
mother, 'so convex, the other so concave, that, by this extreme of
faults, they agree in the common one of being, like the high road,
impassable.' The rumbling coach, with its plethoric steeds, toils slowly
on, and reaches the dismal pile, of which no association is so precious
as that of its having been the birthplace of our loved Victoria Regina.
All around, as the emblazoned carriage impressively veers round into the
grand entrance, savours of William and Mary, of Anne, of Bishop Burnet
and Harley, Atterbury and Bolingbroke. But those were pleasant days
compared to those of the second George, whose return from Hanover in
this mountain of a coach is now described.

The panting steeds are gracefully curbed by the state coachman in his
scarlet livery, with his cocked-hat and gray wig underneath it: now the
horses are foaming and reeking as if they had come from the world's end
to Kensington, and yet they have only been to meet King George on his
entrance into London, which he has reached from Helvoetsluys, on his way
from Hanover, in time, as he expects, to spend his birthday among his
English subjects.

It is Sunday, and repose renders the retirement of Kensington and its
avenues and shades more sombre than ever. Suburban retirement is usually
so. It is noon; and the inmates of Kensington Palace are just coming
forth from the chapel in the palace. The coach is now stopping, and the
equerries are at hand to offer their respectful assistance to the
diminutive figure that, in full Field-marshal regimentals, a cocked-hat
stuck crosswise on his head, a sword dangling even down to his heels,
ungraciously heeds them not, but stepping down, as the great iron gates
are thrown open to receive him, looks neither like a king or a
gentleman. A thin, worn face, in which weakness and passion are at once
pictured; a form buttoned and padded up to the chin; high Hessian boots
without a wrinkle; a sword and a swagger, no more constituting him the
military character than the 'your majesty' from every lip can make a
poor thing of clay a king. Such was George II.: brutal, even to his
submissive wife. Stunted by nature, he was insignificant in form, as he
was petty in character; not a trace of royalty could be found in that
silly, tempestuous physiognomy, with its hereditary small head: not an
atom of it in his made-up, paltry little presen