As the conversation naturally turned on the tendency to adulation and flattery in a court, and their blighting influence on the moral qualities of both parties, my companion related an instance so much in point, that it is worth repeating. A Scotch officer, of no very extraordinary merit, but who had risen to high employments by personal assiduity and the arts of a courtier, was in the presence of George III., at Windsor, in company with one or two others, at a moment when ceremony was banished. That simple-minded and well-meaning monarch was a little apt to admit of tangents in the discourse, and he suddenly exclaimed “D——, it appears to me that you and I are just of a height—let’s measure, let’s measure.” The general placed his back to that of the king, but instead of submitting to the process of measurement, he kept moving his head in a way to prevent it. Another tangent drew the king off, and he left the room. “Why didn’t you stand still, and let him measure, D——,” asked a looker-on. “You kept bobbing your head so, he could do nothing.” “Well, I did’n’t know whether he wanted to be taller, or shorter.”
George III. has got great credit, in America, for his celebrated speech to Mr. Adams, whom he told “that he had been the last man in his kingdom to consent to the independence of America, and he should be the last man to call it in question, now it was admitted.” If he ever made such a declaration, it was a truly regal speech, and of a character with those that are often made by sovereigns, who, if wanting in tact themselves, draw on those around them for a supply. It is now generally understood that the answer of Charles X., when he appeared at the gates of Paris in 1814, as Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, where he is made to say, “that nothing is changed, except in the presence of another Frenchman,” was invented for him, by a clever subordinate, at the suggestion of M. de Talleyrand.[12] The dying speech of Dessaix, was put into his mouth by the First Consul, in his despatches I believe, for the Duc de ——, who stood at his side when he fell, assured me that the ball passed through his head, and that he died without uttering a syllable.
“Is not the truth, the truth?”
It would seem not.
LETTER X.
TO WILLIAM JAY, ESQ., BEDFORD, N. Y.
I remember that some five and twenty years ago, you and I had a discussion on the supposed comparative merits of parliament and congress, considering both strictly as legislative bodies. I say supposed, for it was pretty much supposition, since you had never been out of your own country, and although I had actually been twice in England, and even in London at that time, it was at an age so young, and under circumstances so little favourable to obtaining the knowledge necessary to such a subject, that I was no better off than yourself, as to facts. It is true we had both read speeches attributed to Lord Chatham and Mr. Burke, and Fox and Pitt, and sundry other orators, and which were written by Dr. Johnson and his successors in the grinding line, but this was a very different thing from having looked, and listened, and judged for oneself. In short, we did, what most young men of our age would probably have done, under the same circumstances; we uttered valueless opinions in an oracular manner, convincing no one but ourselves, and positively edifying nobody.
I thought of this discussion, which was longer even than a speech in congress, occupying no small portion of the Christmas holidays in the country, as I first put foot in the room in which were assembled the Commons of England.
I went down to St. Stephen’s about six o’clock, and, passing through divers intricate ways, I finally reached a place where a man stood in a sort of box, like the box-office keeper in a theatre, with the difference that the retailer of places in the gallery of the House of Commons carried on his business in an open and manly manner, there being no necessity for peeping through a hole to get a sight of his face. I am not quite certain that this is not the only thing connected with parliament, that is not more or less mystified.
Having paid my half crown, I was permitted to go at large in a small room with a high ceiling. Out of this room ascended some flights of narrow steps, mounting which, I reached a narrow lobby, that communicated by two doors in front with the gallery of the House, and by two doors at its ends, with little pent-up rooms, which I afterwards found answered as a sort of reporters’ guard rooms. There was also a little door in front, between the two principal entrances, by which the reporters alone went in and out of the gallery.