statement of the King's coldness was, it may be supposed, in reality not the least provoking part of the newspaper writer's offence, if at least there be truth in the aphorism that the greater the truth the greater the libel, since the fact was notorious. However unavoidable Catholic Emancipation had been, it had the lamentable and mischievous effect of the completion of the disruption for the time of the Tory party. The disunion had begun when the Duke and his friends resigned rather than serve under Mr. Canning. It was widened by the retirement of Huskisson and his followers, though in that instance the Canningites were to blame rather than those whom they quitted. But it was consummated by the Bill of 1829, which so exasperated a large section of the extreme Protestant and Tory party, that before the end of the next year they coalesced with the Whigs to overthrow the Ministry, some of them, such as his own old comrade, the Duke of Richmond, even joining a Reform Ministry.'

2

The King himself greatly contributed to widen the breach. He bitterly resented the compulsion under which he had consented to Emancipation, and this for a time reunited him to his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, whom in general he did not greatly like, but who had reconciled himself to him by his philippics against the Papists and the Ministerial majority. It was even said that the Duke's chaplain had written the very articles in the paper selected for prosecution. Throughout the summer of 1829, the Duke of Cumberland was constantly at Windsor, consulted by the King even on official matters, and encouraging him in showing his dislike of the Ministry by the choice of his society. None but members of the old or new Opposition were invited to the Royal Lodge, while if any Ministers happened to be in the neighbourhood 'they dared not approach the King;' or, if a Council were held, they were sure to be ill received. Personally the Duke was not a man to care much for courtesies or discourtesies; indeed, to himself, the King, it is only true to say, did not venture to show incivility; but he saw that his Majesty's conduct had a political importance, as making 'the world think that he wanted to get rid of the Ministry.' And seeing this, he complained of it to the King's private secretary, evidently intending that 1 The Duke's own statement at the end of the next year, after he had retired from office, was that 'the Roman Catholic question had beaten the Administration. They [the Ministers] had estranged their own party." -Desp. vii. 382.

2 Desp. vi. 323 et seq.

3

See his Letter to Sir W. Knighton, the King's private secretary.— Desp. v. 620; date, June 18, 1829.

his complaint should be repeated, and pointing out that his Majesty's proper course was either 'to give his Government all the strength which it was possible for him to give it, showing that he was identified with it,' or to dismiss the Ministers, and 'take those men whom he preferred' as their successors.

But, as he grew older and weaker in health, the King became more difficult to deal with than ever: more insincere, more capricious; and, if he was not so much a slave to a single female influence as he had been, he listened to a greater variety of counsellers of both sexes, one of them, for whose acuteness he at this time professed a high esteem, being not even a subject of his own, but the wife of a foreign ambassador, who was understood to have owed his appointment to his Royal master's belief in her capacity for political intrigue. The Duke was fully aware of all the machinations against him. In August he wrote to the Duke of Northumberland, who had succeeded Lord Anglesey in Ireland, that 'calumny was as busy as ever.' He even revived the charge that had been made against the King's father above sixty years before, and declared that there was 'a party called the King's friends,' whose hopes of aggrandisement were founded on opposition to his Ministers.1 But his was not the character to contend successfully against underhand plots. He had not the arts of a party chief. As he wrote to one of those most in his confidence, he felt no strength excepting in his character for plain manly dealing.' And he was not only above professing for any one a regard or respect which he did not feel, but he often treated even his most trustworthy supporters with a reserve which greatly discontented them. He piqued himself on never bargaining with any individual or party for support, which, if his measures were right, he claimed not as a mark of friendship, but as a duty. Even the King himself he rarely condescended to humour. He often said 'that he was the only person who could manage his Majesty.' And he probably did not overrate his power; but it was a power founded on the King's awe of him, from which his Majesty would gladly have been emancipated.

2

The last months of the reign, however, passed quietly enough. Foreign affairs, in which, in the opinion of some of his colleagues, the Duke took a keener interest than in those at home, had at last, by the termination of the war between Russia and Turkey, been brought into a state which dispelled all fears of any interruption to the general tranquillity of 1 Desp. vi. 18; date, July 16, 1829.

2 Letter to Mr. Fitzgerald.-Desp. vii. 353.

Europe, though, perhaps, a little spleen against Canning's memory may be traced in the Duke's assertion that foreign Governments felt greater confidence in England than under preceding Ministries. And, at the beginning of 1830, he was more satisfied with the King. He had at last been provoked into addressing a strong remonstrance to his Majesty against the conduct of the Duke of Cumberland, who showed his hostility to the Government by what he complained was 'not fair political opposition, using his Majesty's name in communications with political characters in this country as well as abroad;'1 and also against that of some officers of the Household, who had more than once voted against the Government; and his tone so mingled address with firmness, representing that the co-operation he demanded tended to his Majesty's ease as much as to his honour, that the King complied with his wish, and issued the required orders. Yet so little was he to be relied on that within a month 2 the Duke found all the old grievances revived to a degree which, as he declared, rendered it almost impossible to transact the business of the government.

But the reign was drawing to a close. The King was not an old man, but the great irregularity of his habits had impaired his constitution. A complication of disorders now attacked him by the beginning of April 1830, he was forced to relinquish his intention of holding a levee: by the end of the month, he had become incapable of signing his name; and a Bill was introduced to authorise the use of a stamp instead of the sign manual. His sufferings became more and more severe and on the morning of June 26, he died.

We need not devote any great space to a formal portrayal of the deceased Sovereign's character. Few princes have been less estimable, though there have been few more richly endowed with natural gifts. In both the extent and character of his abilities he closely resembled Charles II. Like him, he was accomplished, well-informed, witty, and eminently gracious in manner. But, like him, he gave himself up wholly to selfish voluptuousness, and was utterly indifferent to the

1 Desp. vi. 455.

2 February 8, 1830, the Duke writes to thank his Majesty for the orders which he has given with respect to the officers in the Household who are in Parliament; but March 8, he writes to Lord Conyngham renewing his complaint, and pointing out that the want of interest in the measures of his government, or rather in the rejection of those measures proposed by their opponents,' . . . renders 'the transaction of the King's business a most difficult and arduous task, almost impossible to be performed.'-Desp. vi. 471–528.

interests of the nation entrusted to his government, or to any higher consideration than the indulgence of his own caprice. The altered spirit of the times saved him from the commission of such foul crimes as his predecessor was guilty of, when he signed the death-warrants of scores of innocent persons for crimes which he knew to have no existence. Even on the Roman Catholic question the parallel holds good to some extent, if, at least, we adopt the Duke of Wellington's opinion, borne out by many well-known facts, that George IV. was in reality entirely indifferent to the Catholic question, and only worked himself up to a fictitious excitement on the subject under the influence of the Duke of York, and afterwards of the Duke of Cumberland. To the praise of good nature, which has often been bestowed, neither of them seems justly entitled neither of them had the magnanimity to forgive; though the rancorous malice with which Charles pursued Clarendon had more serious effects than the bitter resentment which George IV. cherished against all who thwarted him, and especially on the subject of the Queen. If it is the worst of offences in a Sovereign to lower the tone of private virtue and public morality in his kingdom, it can hardly be denied that both were equally guilty, and, on the whole, it must be pronounced that few Sovereigns in any country have left behind them names less entitled to respect.

The seventh volume of the Wellington Despatches carries on the Duke's history to the end of 1831. We see in it how the confidence in the general tranquillity of Europe, which he expressed in the spring of 1830, was dissipated before the end of the summer by the despotic bigotry of the French King, which kindled the spark of revolution in more than one country; and had a direct influence in exciting that fierce enthusiasm for Reform which overthrew the Duke's own Administration before the end of the autumn. But the great question of Parliamentary Reform, with the confusion and reconstruction of parties to which it gave rise, and its predominant influence on all the subsequent history of the nation, is a subject demanding separate treatment.

ART. IV.-MIDDLE-CLASS EDUCATION IN

ENGLAND.

1. Report of the Schools Enquiry Commissioners. (1868.) 2. Report to the Salisbury Diocesan Synod of its Committee on Secondary Education in the Diocese.

3. S. Nicholas College and its Schools. Rev. Dr. LowE. (1878.)

THERE are, on the lowest estimate, some 220,000 boys in England of the age to be at school, belonging to what are called the middle classes, for whom the high-class schools are too costly, and not quite suitable, while the elementary schools would not carry them far enough. It is to their needs mainly that the attention of the Endowed Schools Enquiry Commission was directed, and their Blue Book of twenty substantial volumes devoted. The extent of the question before them may be judged from the size of their Report; the difficulties involved in it, from the unsatisfactory and disorganised condition in which things remain, after ten years of earnest work have been expended in reforming educational abuses, and adapting educational resources to modern needs. Gradually this great blank in our educational system is being filled up by the foundation of new middle-class schools suited for large numbers, and by the better employment, under new schemes issued by the commissioners, of old educational endowments.

It may be asked what, before these changes, became of the boys for whom these schools are set on foot? The answer we believe to be that some went to elementary schools, and left them, and with them all education, almost if not quite as young as the children of day labourers; many to the privateadventure schools which were and are scattered thickly over the country; a good many also went, with or without assistance from endowments, to the local grammar schools.

The Salisbury Diocesan Report, covering as it does nearly the whole of two counties, with a total population of 381,745, calculates the present requirements, supply, and deficiency in secondary education within the diocese as follows:

'The proportion to gross population of boys who should attend secondary schools is about 16 per 1,000, which gives a total of 6,108 for whom provision is required. Enquiry has shown that of these 6,108 boys, about one-half, or 3,054, leave school at or before the age of fifteen; of the remaining half, about three-fourths, or 2,290,