' The breakdown of her
impeachment, and her acceptance of an income formed a fitting anti-
climax to the terrible absurdities of her position. She died from the
effects of a chill caught when she was trying vainly to force a way to
her husband's coronation. Unhappy woman! Our sympathy for her is not
misgiven. Fate wrote her a most tremendous tragedy, and she played it
in tights. Let us pity her, but not forget to pity her husband, the
King, also.
It is another common accusation against George that he was an
undutiful and unfeeling son. If this was so, it is certain that not
all the blame is to be laid upon him alone. There is more than one
anecdote which shows that King George disliked his eldest son, and
took no trouble to conceal his dislike, long before the boy had been
freed from his tutors. It was the coldness of his father and the petty
restrictions he loved to enforce that first drove George to seek the
companionship of such men as Egalite' and the Duke of Cumberland, both
of whom were quick to inflame his impressionable mind to angry
resentment. Yet, when Margaret Nicholson attempted the life of the
King, the Prince immediately posted off from Brighton that he might
wait upon his father at Windsor--a graceful act of piety that was
rewarded by his father's refusal to see him.
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