ich
was closely invested and blockaded both by sea and land: he therefore
declared, that, as in that case it was contrary to the law of nations
for any neutral power to relieve or succour the besieged, he was
determined to seize any vessel that should attempt to throw provisions
into the place.

{GEORGE II. 1727-1760}

DEATH and CHARACTER of KING GEORGE II.

While the arms of Great Britain still prospered in every effort tending
to the real interest of the nation, an event happened which for a
moment obscured the splendour of her triumphs, and could not but be
very alarming to those German allies, whom her liberality had enabled to
maintain an expensive and sanguinary war of humour and ambition. On the
twenty-fifth day of October, George II. king of Great Britain, without
any previous disorder, was in the morning suddenly seized with the agony
of death, at the palace at Kensington. He had risen at the usual hour,
drank his chocolate, and inquired, about the wind, as anxious for the
arrival of the foreign mails; then he opened a window of his apartment,
and perceiving the weather was serene, declared he would walk in the
garden. In a few minutes after this declaration, while he remained
alone in his chamber, he fell down upon the floor; the noise of his fall
brought his attendants into the room, who lifted him on the bed, where
he desired, in a faint voice, that the princess Amelia might be called;
but before she could reach the apartments he had expired. An attempt
was made to bleed him, but without effect: and indeed his malady was far
beyond the reach of art; for when the cavity of the thorax or chest was
opened, and inspected by the sergeant-surgeons, they found the right
ventricle of the heart actually ruptured, and a great quantity of blood
discharged through the aperture into the surrounding pericardium; so
that he must have died instantaneously, in consequence of the effusion.
The case, however, was so extraordinary, that we question whether there
is such another instance upon record. A rupture of this nature
appears the more remarkable, as it happened to a prince of a healthy
constitution, unaccustomed to excess, and far advanced beyond that
period of life, when the blood might be supposed to flow with a
dangerous impetuosity.

Thus died George II. at the age of seventy-seven, after a long reign of
thirty-four years, distinguished by a variety of important events, and
chequered with a vicissittide of