ration of London proceeded in State to St. James Palace, with the following address to the King

"Most gracious Sovereign!-We your Majesty's ever loyal and faithful subjects, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons of the city of London, in Common Council assembled, humbly beseech your Majesty to accept our most sincere and dutiful congratulations on the safe delivery of the Queen, and the auspicious birth of another Prince."

The joyful event of an increase in your Majesty's illustrious family, will always be gratefully considered by us, as a further substantial security, to the civil and religious liberties of this your Majesty's free and native country.

Every addition to your Majesty's domestic happiness, fills our hearts with the highest pleasure and satisfaction, and fully confiding, that your Majesty's royal sentiments, ever coincide with the united wishes of your faithful people, we gladly embrace every opportunity of testifying our joy, and laying our congratulations at your Majesty's feet.

Permit us therefore, Royal Sir, to assure your Majesty, that your faithful Citizens of London, from their zealous attachment to your Royal House, and the true honour and dignity of your Crown, whenever a happy establishment of public measures shall present a favourable occasion, will be ready to exert their utmost abilities, in support of such wise councils, as apparently tend, to render your Majesty's reign, happy and glorious."

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The following was the answer of the King:"I thank you for this dutiful address. Your congratulations on the further increase of my family, and your assurances of zealous attachment to it, cannot but be very agreeable to me. I have nothing so much at heart, as the welfare and happiness of my people, and have the greatest satisfaction in every event that may be an additional security to those civil and religious liberties, upon which the prosperity of this kingdom depends."

A King's Speech upon the opening of Parliament, and a King's answer to an address, are in point of sense and mean

ing, pretty much on a par; analyze them in whatever alembic you will, and a caput mortuum is the result. At the presentation however, of this address, rather a ludicrous circumstance occurred. The Right Honorable Frederick Bull, was then Lord Mayor of the City of London, and at that period, the honor of Knighthood was as eagerly covetted, as it was profusely granted by George III., to the outrage, sometimes of all propriety and decorum. The carrying up of an address to his Majesty, was then considered as an indisputable passport to the honor of knighthood, and the King, having on this occasion, delivered his answer, was about to retire, when the Lord in waiting intimated to his Majesty, that the Lord Mayor was waiting to be knighted." Eh! what," exclaimed the Monarch,-"waiting to be knighted !—what, what's his name?" "Frederick Bull, please your Majesty," responded the Lord in waiting. "Frederick ?" exclaimed the King,

a very good name,- -a very good name indeed-it is the name of my second son-but Bull !—I never knighted a Bull in my life-some relation I suppose to John Bull. "Exactly so, please your Majesty," said the pliant courtier-" A good, a worthy family," said the King-"have heard a good deal about them I'll knight him," and accordingly plain Frederick Bull Esq. returned to the Mansion House, Sir Frederick Bull, to the great delight of Mrs. Bull, and all the younger branches of the Bull family.

The baptism of the royal infant, took place on the 18th of September, in the Grand Council Chamber at St. James Palace, the ceremony being performed by Dr. Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury. He was christened William Henry, after his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, who stood sponsor on the occasion with his brother, Prince Henry Frederick, and the Princess of Brunswick. As the Romans, the supposed progenitors of the Brunswick family, had their lucky, and their unlucky months, so have their descendants, a particular month, in which fortune appears to have been bountiful to them. The three first children of George III, were born in the month of August. By the death of Queen Anne, in

August, the Brunswick family ascended the throne of these

realms. Augusta, the eldest Wales, was born in August. beth, the immediate predecessors of the present Royal Family, were both born in August, and William the Fourth, and Adelaide his Queen, were also born in August.

child of Frederick, Prince of James I. and his consort Eliza

On the 19th of August, 1767, Prince William Henry, was inoculated for the small pox, in despite of all the obloquy which had been thrown upon his parents, at the time of the inoculation of his two royal brothers, by a set of purblind, prejudiced creatures, who actually pretended to behold in the practice of inoculation, an interference in the affairs of Heaven, incompatible with a human being, and some over zealous, and puritanical preachers extended their folly so far, as to denounce it from the pulpit, as an act of an impious tendency, and their Majesties came in for an extravagant share of abuse from those worthy and enlightened souls, for they had endangered the lives of their two elder sons by the unjustifiable practice of inoculation, thereby frustrating the hopes of a nation, of a legitimate successor to the Crown, and now, not taking any notice of the repeated advice, that had been given them on the subject, they were continuing in their career of infatuation and impiety, by the inoculation of their third son. In despite, however, of all the anathemas from the pulpit, their Majesties, steadily and boldly, adhered to the practice of inoculation, and to the resolution which they displayed on this important matter, may be attributed the overthrow of the many obstacles, which had been thrown in the way of its general practice.

Exemplary as Queen Charlotte was in many of her domestic duties, yet it must not be concealed that in her general conduct, she was decidedly anti-english. She had not yet learnt to conform to the manners of the English People, and she consequently gave at times, great offence, by an injudicious and an obstinate adherence to the stiff and rigid ceremony of a German Court, to the total exclusion of those more free

and social manners, which particularly belong to the English character. To those who have witnessed the infantine drawing rooms of the reigning Princes of Germany, at the period of the birth of the three elder children of the Queen of England, could not but be struck with the folly and inutility of subjecting children, in the very earliest stages of infancy, to preside over a ceremony, of which they could scarcely be made to comprehend the meaning, and which was at direct variance with the feelings of youth.

We are called upon to make the above remarks, in consequence of the Queen, introducing infantine drawing-rooms into this country, the first of which, was held on the 25th of October, 1769, at a time, when the Prince of Wales was little more than six years old-the Bishop of Osnaburg about five, Prince William about four, and the Princess Royal, only in her second year. It never could have entered into the head of any one, but a German Princess, to place four such infants, at the top of a room, decked out in the most outre style of fashion, to have the nobility and gentry of the country introduced to them, and we know not which deserves our reprobation the most, the parties, who could expose their children to such a scene of buffoonery, or those who could so far degrade themselves, as to pay their Court to a set of infants, and deem it an honor to kiss their hands. The reporters, however of those times, inform us, that the royal infants received the company, with the utmost grace and affability, and the Queen was of course, by the chroniclers of the Court, extolled usque ad nauseam, for the extreme attention which she must have paid to the manners of her offspring, to enable them to go through the important scene, with so much credit to themselves, and so few infractions of the rules of politeness.

There were, however, in those times even, some snarling, crabbed, ill-natured persons living, in the character of caricaturists, who considered these infantine drawing-rooms as an excellent subject for the lash of their satirical powers; and,

accordingly, one of them put forth the following caricature, in which the Prince of Wales, with a high toupee and bag-wig, and a long sword dangling at his side, is represented as entering the room, with a kite in his hand; the Bishop of Osnaburg, with his hobby-horse between his legs; Prince William, spinning his top; and the Princess Royal is behind a screen, receiving some very indispensable assistance from her nurse. It was, however, not long before the Queen discovered, or she was made to know that these drawing-rooms were not congenial with the English taste, and indeed she sometimes found that it was by no means an easy matter to induce the royal boys to undergo the penance of them, and on one occasion, when the three youngsters were engaged in a game of cricket, and were called upon to dress for the drawing-room, they sent a message back, that the company were to wait till the game

was over.

It has been stated by one of the minor historians of the life of William IV., on alluding to the above circumstance, that these drawing-rooms were adopted by the Queen, for the purpose of "turning the current of public opinion into the peaceful channel, from which it had been diverted by faction." It is true that the throne was at this time shaken to that degree, that it required but the exercise of a very small portion of the powers of the people to overthrow it altogether. The whole of the metropolis was in a state of the utmost commotion; the injudicious and impolitic measures adopted by ministers against Wilkes, roused the indignation of the people to the highest pitch; and the revolutionary spirit manifested in America, brought on by the crooked policy of ministers, and the obstinate, war-loving disposition of the King, actually placed his throne in a state of jeopardy. In what manner then these great political evils could be overcome by two or three royal children holding a drawing-room, of which not a thou• sandth part of the people knew any thing about, and if they had known it, would only have laughed at it, must be left to be solved by the disseminators of so ridiculous a tale. We cannot, ourselves, trace the slightest connection with the