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“Chassez le naturel, il revient au galop," says the poet, or the proverb created by the poet; and the artificiality of my compelled existence caused me after a time to yearn for the simplicities of life, as a fish gasping on the sand after the limpid waters.

It is a horrible thing to resign the privilege of being out of health,-out of spirits,-out of temper. Even the sun, to palliate the monotony of its existence, is sometimes permitted to shine through a cloud. But a courtier,"homme sans humeur et sans honneur,"-must be an incarnate smile,-an instinctive affirmative, -a symbol of obsequious acquiescence; his "nay" must be so modulated as to sound like "yea"; his dissent must be so accoutred as to resemble accordance, like its twin brother. He is invited frankly to declare his opinions, because he is pre-understood to have no opinions but those of his august master; and his independence of speech is much like that of Punch's dog, trained to bark at its wooden

master, in order that it may be rapped reprovingly on the pate for the recreation of the bystanders.

Even the satisfaction of eating, drinking, and sleeping more luxuriously than elsewhere, is marred by the drawback of being unable to eat, drink, and sleep in one's own time and place; and the seclusion which was sport to his Majesty, was death to me. I had not been threescore and five years on the boards, to render me disgusted with

The fickle breath of popular applause.

Pall Mall had never hissed me. No Chancellor had betrayed me into odious measures by the promise of a divorce, and left me in the lurch to be twitted by my wife, and pelted by the rabble. I was consequently enough in sorts with mankind to sigh after the acclamations of society. I could have endured the weight of my golden chains, if permitted to rattle them for the admiration of the vulgar; but to have

to play Lord Grizzle without an audience, made me painfully aware that I was playing Lord Grizzle. The surliness of my soul under the comic mask I was condemned to wear, made me fully understand the hypochondriacism of Carlini the Grimaldi of Paris - who wept under his harlequin's dress while the public laughed at his lazzi.

The shepherds who were good enough to remain contented in the "bella étà di oro," and the vale of Tempe, had never read a newspaper, or applauded Malibran; and I swear there were moments when I should have preferred an attic in Bury Street, as the most abject of younger brothers, to that gorgeous Castle,to that Apician menu,―to—

But, no!-I cannot permit myself to say a word against the park.-Though, during the early days of my service in the Household, it had been pain and grief to me to traverse that portion of the royal domain adjoining Forest Lodge, I had become inured to it as one does

to any moral torture; for it is only such pangs as a tooth-ache or the tic-douloreux which habit does nothing to assuage. And now, my favourite refuge from my weariness of spirit, was to ride off alone into those verdant glades, philosophizing, like Jacques, among the drooping trees; and I verily believe occasionally mistaken by the officers of His Majesty's Household Brigade, through the mists of an autumnal day, for the spirit of Herne the hunter.

One pleasant afternoon in October,—(it was October I remember, because Lord and Sir my colleagues in waiting, were gone pheasant shooting in the preserves towards Englefield Green,) I was sauntering on horseback in one of the grassy by-ways of the park, noting the golden tinge upon the beech trees as contrasted with the thick dark unchangeable foliage of an adjoining thicket of hollies, moralizing, (for an autumnal day is apt to bring on severe attacks of morality,) upon the-but why trouble the public with my

moralizations, when I am on the brink of an interesting episode ;-when, lo! I beheld at no great distance a pony chaise dragged furiously along, with two ladies for its occupants, by a pony which for its size might have been carried off in their arms, but which by its spirit, which was an evil spirit, seemed to be carrying them the Lord knows whither.

The weather was not too hot to make exertion disagreeable; and I consequently rode up,-seized the little beast by the bit,--and effectually stopped its career; but in the operation, no matter whether by my bungling or the pony's, the chaise was dragged over the stump of a tree, and overturned.

I had nothing to apprehend of loss of life or risk of limb to the heroines of the adventure; and even had their peril been greater, there was nothing in their dress or equipage (all I knew of them at present) to engage any very earnest sympathies in their behalf. I had consequently some difficulty in refraining from a

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