of manhood and of the world to come, and to believe, as you are told,
that childhood is the only happiness known; all this is quite
terrible. And all Royal children, of whom I have read, particularly
George, seem to have passed through greater trials in childhood than
do the children of any other class. Mr. Fitzgerald, hazarding for once
an opinion, thinks that `the stupid, odious, German, sergeant-system
of discipline that had been so rigorously applied was, in fact,
responsible for the blemishes of the young Prince's character.' Even
Thackeray, in his essay upon George III., asks what wonder that the
son, finding himself free at last, should have plunged, without
looking, into the vortex of dissipation. In Torrens' Life of Lord
Melbourne we learn that Lord Essex, riding one day with the King, met
the young Prince wearing a wig, and that the culprit, being sternly
reprimanded by his father, replied that he had `been ordered by his
doctor to wear a wig, for he was subject to cold.' Whereupon the King,
to vent the aversion he already felt for his son, or, it may have
been, glorying in the satisfactory result of his discipline, turned to
Lord Essex and remarked, `A lie is ever ready when it is wanted.'
George never lost this early-ingrained habit of lies. It is to
George's childish fear of his guardians that we must trace that
extraordinary power of bamboozling his courtiers, his ministry, and
his mistresses that distinguished him through his long life. It is
characteristic of the man that he should himself have bitterly
deplored his own untruthfulness. When, in after years, he was
consulting Lady Spencer upon the choice of a governess for his child,
he made this remarkable speech, `Above all, she must be taught the
truth. You know that I don't speak the truth and my brothers don't,
and I find it a great defect, from which I would have my daughter
free. We have been brought up badly, the Queen having taught us to
equivocate.' You may laugh at the picture of the little chubby, curly-