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her alone…… Princess Elizabeth is much altered personally, to my great concern; but her manners, and amiability, and talents, I think more pleasing and more attaching than ever, How delighted I was at their arrival !

THE QUEEN AND PRINCESSES AT BATH.

(Madame d'Arblay to her Son.) Bath, November 9, 1817. We have here spent nearly a week in a manner the most extraordinary, beginning with hope and pleasure, proceeding to fear and pain, and ending in disappointment and grief.

The joy exhibited on Monday, when her majesty and her royal highness arrived, was really ecstatic ; the illumination was universal. The public offices were splendid; so were the tradespeople's who had promises or hopes of employment; the nobles and gentles were modestly gay, and the poor eagerly put forth their mite. But all was flattering, because voluntary. Nothing was induced by power, or forced by mobs. All was left to individual choice. Your padre and I patrolled the principal streets, and were quite touched by the universality of the homage paid to the virtues and merit of our venerable queen, upon this her first progress through any part of her domains by herself. Hitherto she has only accompanied the poor king, as at Weymouth and Cheltenham, Worcester and Exeter, Plymouth and Portsmouth, etc. ; or the prince regent, as at Brighthelmstone. But here, called by her health, she came as principal, and in her own character of rank and consequence. And, as Mr. Hay told me, the inhabitants of Bath were all even vehement to let her see the light in which they held her individual self, after so many years witnessing her exemplary conduct and distinguished merit. ::She was very sensible to this tribute; but much affected, nay, dejected, in receiving it, at the beginning; from coming without the king where the poor king had always meant himself to bring her - but just as he had arranged for the excursion, and even had three houses taken for him in the Royal-crescent, he was afflicted by blindness. He would not then come; for what, he said, was a beautiful city to him who could not look at it? This was continually in the remembrance of the queen during the honours of her reception ; but she had recovered from the melancholy recollection, and was Page 421

cheering herself by the cheers of all the inhabitants, when the first news arrived of the illness of the Princess Charlotte. At that moment she was having her diamonds placed on her head for the reception of the mayor and corporation of Bath, with an address upon the honour done to their city, and upon their hopes from the salutary spring she came to quaff. Her first thought was to issue orders for deferring this ceremony but when she considered that all the members of the municipality must be assembled, and that the great dinner they had prepared to give to the Duke of Clarence could only be postponed at an enormous and useless expense, she composed her spirits, finished her regal decorations, and admitted the citizens of Bath, who were highly gratified by her condescension, and struck by her splendour, which was the same as she appeared in on the greatest occasions in the capital. The Princess Elizabeth was also a blaze of jewels. And our good little Mayor (not four feet high) and aldermen and common councilmen were all transported.

NEWS ARRIVES OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE'S DEATH.

The Duke of Clarence accepted their invitation, and was joined by the Marquis of Bath and all the queen's suite. But the dinner was broken up. The duke received an express with the terrible tidings: he rose from table, and struck his forehead as he read them, and then hurried out of the assembly with inexpressible trepidation and dismay. The queen also was at table when the same express arrived, though only with the princess and her own party: all were dispersed in a moment, and she shut herself up, admitting no one but her royal highness. She would have left Bath the next morning; but her physician, Sir Henry Halford, said it would be extremely dangerous that she should travel so far, in her state of health, just in the first perturbation of affliction. She would see no one but her suite all day, and set out the next for Windsor Castle, to spend the time previous to the last melancholy rites, in the bosom of her family.

All Bath wore a face of mourning. The transition from gaiety and exultation was really awful. What an extinction of youth and happiness ! The poor Princess Charlotte had never known a moment's suffering since her marriage. Her lot seemed perfect. Prince Leopold is, indeed, to be pitied. Page 422

(Madame d'Arblay to Mrs. Broome.) Bath, November 25, 1817. …..We are all here impressed with the misfortunes of the royal house, and chiefly with the deadly blow inflicted on the perfect conjugal happiness of the first young couple in the kingdom. The first couple not young bad already received a blow yet, perhaps, more frightful : for to have, yet lose-to keep, yet never to enjoy the being we most prize, is surely yet more torturing than to yield at once to the stroke which we know awaits us, and by which, at last, we must necessarily and indispensably fall. The queen supports herself with the calm and serenity belonging to one inured to misfortune, and submissive to Providence. The Princess Elizabeth has native spirits that resist all woe after the first shock, though she is full of kindness, goodness, and zeal for right action.