ys pleaded difficulties, Acts of Parliament that would be needed,
and the like, whenever Sophie Dorothee came to visit him at Hanover, and
urge this matter. The taciturn, inarticulately thoughtful, rather sulky
old Gentleman, he had weighty burdens lying on him; felt fretted and
galled, in many ways; and had found life, Electoral and even Royal,
a deceptive sumptuosity, little better than a more or less extensive
"feast of SHELLS," next to no real meat or drink left in it to the
hungry heart of man. Wife sitting half-frantic in the Castle of Ahlden,
waxing more and more into a gray-haired Megaera (with whom Sophie
Dorothee under seven seals of secrecy corresponds a little, and even
the Prince of Wales is suspected of wishing to correspond); a foolish
disobedient Prince of Wales; Jacobite Pretender people with their Mar
Rebellions, with their Alberoni combinations; an English Parliament
jangling and debating unmelodiously, whose very language is a mystery to
us, nothing but Walpole in dog-latin to help us through it: truly it is
not a Heaven-on-Earth altogether, much as Mother Sophie and her foolish
favorite, our disobedient Prince of Wales, might long for it! And the
Hanover Tail, the Robethons, Bernstorfs, Fabrices, even the Blackamoor
Porters,--they are not beautiful either, to a taciturn Majesty of some
sense, if he cared about their doings or them. Voracious, plunderous,
all of them; like hounds, long hungry, got into a rich house which has
no master, or a mere imaginary one. "MENTERIS IMPUDENTISSIME," said
Walpole in his dog-latin once, in our Royal presence, to one of these
official plunderous gentlemen, "You tell an impudent lie!"--at which we
only laughed. [Horace Walpole, _Reminiscences of George I. and George
II._ (London, 1786.)]

His Britannic Majesty by no means wanted sense, had not his situation
been incurably absurd. In his young time he had served creditably enough
against the Turks; twice commanded the REICHS-Army in the Marlborough
Wars, and did at least testify his indignation at the inefficient state
of it. His Foreign Politics, so called, were not madder than those of
others. Bremen and Verden he had bought a bargain; and it was natural to
protect them by such resources as he had, English or other. Then there
was the World-Spectre of the Pretender, stretching huge over Creation,
like the Brocken-Spectre in hazy weather;--against whom how protect
yourself, except by cannonading for the Kaiser at Mess