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THREE:The king had a stormy and rather perilous passage across the Channel. Mr. Freemantle sarcastically alludes to the feelings of the royal passenger in connection with this voyage:��"The king in his journey home overtook Lord and Lady Harcourt, now the bosom friends of Lady Conyngham, stopped them, got out of his carriage, and sat with them for a quarter of an hour on the public road, recounting all his perilous adventures at sea, and flattering reception in Ireland. Lady Harcourt told me his pious acknowledgment for his great escape of being shipwrecked was quite edifying, and the very great change in his moral habits and religious feelings was quite astonishing, and all owing to Lady Conyngham." On his return to London, after a visit to Hanover, the king devoted himself to a life of seclusion for a considerable time, during which it appears that the Marchioness of Conyngham maintained an ascendency over him most damaging to his character and Government. She had not only made the royal favour tributary to the advancement of her own family, but she meddled in political affairs with mischievous effect. "Had it been confined to mere family connections," writes Robert Huish, "no voice, perhaps, would have been raised against it; but when the highest offices in the Church were bestowed on persons scarcely previously heard of��when political parties rose and fell, and Ministers were created and deposed to gratify the ambition of a female��then the palace of the king appeared as if surrounded by some pestilential air. The old hereditary counsellors of the king avoided the Court, as alike fatal to private probity and public honour. The entrance to Windsor Castle was, as it were, hermetically sealed by the enchantress within to all but the favoured few. The privilege of the entr��e was curtailed to the very old friends of the king, and even the commonest domestics in the castle were constrained to submit to the control of the marchioness. The Court of George IV. certainly differed widely from that of Charles II., although the number and[221] reputation of their several mistresses were nearly the same in favour and character; but George IV. had no confiscations to confer on the instruments of his pleasures."

THREE:ASSASSINATION OF SPENCER PERCEVAL. (See p. 23.)

THREE:

THREE:[See larger version]Samuel Taylor Coleridge (b. 1772; d. 1834) published his earliest poems in association with his friends, Wordsworth, Charles Lloyd, and Charles Lamb. But his contributions, especially of the "Ancient Mariner," soon pointed them out as belonging to a genius very different. In his compositions there is a wide variety, some of them being striking from their wild and mysterious nature, some for their elevation of both spirit and language, and others for their deep tone of feeling. His "Genevi��ve," his "Christabel," his "Ancient Mariner," and his "Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni," are themselves the sufficient testimonies of a great master. In some of his blank verse compositions the tone is as independently bold as the sentiments are philosophical and humane. Besides his own poetry, Coleridge translated part of Schiller's "Wallenstein," and[187] was the author of several prose works of a high philosophical character. Southey was as different from Coleridge in the nature of his poetical productions as Coleridge was from Wordsworth. In his earliest poems he displayed a strong resentment against the abuses of society; he condemned war in his poem on "Blenheim," and expressed himself unsparingly on the treatment of the poor. His "Botany Bay Eclogues" are particularly in this vein. But he changed all that, and became one of the most zealous defenders of things as they are. His smaller poems are, after all, the best things which he wrote; his great epics of "Madoc," "Roderick, the Last of the Goths," "The Curse of Kehama," and "Thalaba," now finding few readers. Yet there are parts of them that must always charm.

THREE:But amid the discouragements of monetary legislation, which showed that it would require a determined contest to compel Ministers to retrench, there were symptoms of a spirit of legal and social reform amongst Parliamentary men generally which augured the approach of better times. Mr. Sturges Bourne obtained the passing of his long-advocated Poor Law Bill; but Bills for regulating settlements, and for preventing the misapplication of the poor rates, were thrown out. A Bill was passed to regulate the treatment of children in cotton factories, and to limit the hours of their employment. Mr. Brougham's Act for inquiry into the charitable foundations of England was extended, with the support of Government, so as to apply to educational as well as to all kinds of charities, except such as had special visitors, or were maintained by private subscriptions. Sir James Mackintosh also took up the humane track of labour occupied so nobly by the late Sir Samuel Romilly. On the 2nd of March he moved for the appointment of a select committee to take into consideration the subject of capital punishment as regarded felonies. This was eminently needed, for the penal laws during the reign of George III. were truly Draconian. Notwithstanding a strong opposition by Ministers, the motion was carried, amid much cheering, and on the 6th of July Sir James Mackintosh introduced the report, which[146] was ordered to be printed. Government, as if to wipe out their disgrace in resisting so humane a measure, now proposed an inquiry into the condition of gaols and other places of confinement, and into the best method of employing and reforming delinquents during their imprisonment. Some reforms were made in Scottish law. The old rights of trial by battle, and of appeals of murder, felony, or mayhem, were abolished as rendered unnecessary by the full exercise of the institution of jury, and as belonging only to a barbarous age. The severity of the Scottish law against duels was mitigated, that law pronouncing forfeiture of all movable property, and banishment against all persons sending, or even carrying, a challenge to fight a duel. The principle of that law was sound, but its severity was its own defeat. A more questionable Bill was one carried, after much opposition, called the Foreign Enlistment Bill, which was intended to check the aid of Englishmen in assisting the Spanish South American colonists in throwing off the oppressive government of the mother country. Numbers of Englishmen were engaged on the side of independence, and this Bill was vainly intended to put an end to that generous aid.