only the cook aboard. When they had made a successful cast, they signalled the schooner with an oar. She ran down to them, the seine was made fast to her side, and the fish dipped out on the deck, where they were rapidly dressed and thrown into barrels of brine, one school being disposed of before another was sought, owing to their easy deterioration.

At night the island went early to its slumbers, and only the light-house on the hill kept watch. It dazzled the eyes if one looked up, and rendered the darkness more profound. On evenings of a heavy atmosphere slow rays went round and round from it, separating the mist like vast knives. But the fleet at night, with its numerous lanterns (green to port, and red to starboard), and watchmen on deck, was like a little floating city. There was no commodore and no regular organization, yet accidents from collision were They laid their heads all one way, by a tacit agreement. At midnight they reversed, and beat back upon their course.

rare.

The schools worked nearer the top at night, and their presence was betrayed by a phosphorescent "firing" in the water, so that it seemed something almost like insensate folly that this, instead of the day, was not the favorite time. But attention to the subject showed that the nets fired the water too, and gave a warning much more than counterbalancing the advantage. The desirability of a calm understanding of what you are going to do before you attempt to do it was brought to view by this discovery, and also the evident intention of nature to interpose a certain degree of hardship between the prize and the methods of securing it.

Reflecting thus as he was "smacked" back to Portland, soon after, as part of the burden of the "Marthy," Middleton felt that these lessons alone, notwithstanding they might be learned elsewhere, if they were invariably observed and acted upon, were much more than sufficient to repay a desultory jaunt among the fish and men of the Maine islands.

T is interesting to re

IT

construct any genuine life-drama, to pluck from time and oblivion the most inconspicuous story that has a human soul for its basis. But that artificial product of society, royalty, has for. us, with our democratic vision and culture, the superadded interest that attaches to the curious and the antique, and we seek to get beneath its trappings and accidents, face to face with its personal aspects, its domestic relations, in a spirit of adventure, as travelling into a sociological domain not intrinsically new, but biassed and made unfamiliar through its unique circumstance. And on this apex of ranks and orders there are degrees of

GEORGE III.

centuries.

QUEEN CHARLOTTE.

prominence. There are some faintly outlined figures, inchoate princes and rulers, who hover indeterminately between the crowned and the uncrowned, perhaps to end unexpectedly in the first class, and so to vindicate their raison d'être, perhaps to be known only as the connecting link in the evolution of kings, or else to occupy always shadowy places in historic backgrounds, and so to fade out of remembrance much as do humanity's less elevated mediocrities. Looking, then, at this special group of princes and princesses, the family of George III., with a view to the better knowledge of those among them whose fate was of the obscurer sort, we find here the ever-similar, ever-varying elements of realism and romance.

Thackeray, in his well-known lectures, has brought before us as in panoramic procession the courts of the four Georges. "Burney," whom he quotes in describing

the household of the third George, has much to tell us of its members. A more highly favored observer of the same royal family was the aged Mrs. Delany, who, while living with the Duchess of Portland at Bulstrode, had frequent opportunities of intercourse with the King and Queen, and whose home during the latter years of her life was at Windsor, where she had been established by royal invitation. Through these sources-Mrs. Delany's recollections being supplemented by those of later generations in her own family -are we principally enabled to look into this royal interior. Here

we

learn something of the home life of George III., the good husband and father, the unwise King, who was as a thorn in the side of our forefathers, his transatlantic subjects, until they worked out their own deliverance. Of Queen Charlotte we hear much. Miss Burney, as we know, held the drearily honorable post of Keeper of the Queen's Robes; and Macaulay, in his essay on Madame D'Arblay, dwells indignantly on the hardships of her position. In truth, the "sweet Queen," so considerate for her venerable friend Mrs. Delany, was very much the belle dame sans merci with her dependents. Queen Charlotte preserved her royal graciousness of manner, however, and appeared regally unconscious of the sacrifices she required from her ladies. The case was somewhat the same with his Majesty and the equerries; and the wearied attendants compared miseries and condoled with one another over their treadmill existence.

ness.

FREDERICK, DUKE OF YORK.

He was the soldier of the family, as William was the sailor. The latter, the Duke of Clarence, was two years younger than the Duke of York, and at this time just twenty. Charlotte, Princess Royal, a year younger than William, makes a break in the succession of princes, and after her comes Edward, Duke of Kent.* Then follow two more princesses. Augusta, Miss Burney's favorite, was at this time seventeen. Her "sweetness and unaffected simplicity of manners" are the constant themes of Miss Burney's praise, and she speaks of this princess as "the general, almost universal, favorite." Elizabeth was two years her junior. These were the three young ladies of the establishment. Next we have the three younger princes, Ernest, Augustus, and Adolphus, boys of fourteen, twelve, and eleven, afterward to be known as the Dukes of Cumberland, Sussex, and Cambridge. The three youngest princesses close the list. Mary, born

* The portrait of Edward, Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria, was given in Mrs. Oliphant's paper on Queen Victoria in the July number of this Mag

azine.

in the year of American independence, is now nine; Sophia is a year younger, and the little Princess Amelia is just two years old. Two princes coming between Sophia and Amelia had died. These were Octavius and Alfred; the first lived four years, the latter two. It was on the occasion of the death of Prince Octavius, in 1783, that the King was reported to have used the touching expression that SO charmed Hannah More. "Many people would regret," he said, "that they ever had so sweet a child, since they were forced to part with him. That is not my case: I am thankful to God for having graciously allowed me to enjoy such a creature for four years." The little Amelia, born in this same year, came to take the place of the lost darling.

It is in this year (1783) that Mrs. Delany gives us one of her pleasant pictures of the royal family, as they drive up the park at Bulstrode, two coaches and six, with the King on horseback, and a large retinue. "The company were the King and Queen, Princess Royal, Princesses Augusta, Elizabeth, Mary, Sophia-a lovely group. They were all dressed in white muslin polonaises, white chip hats with white feathers, except the Queen, who had on a black hat and cloak. The King was in his Windsor uniform, blue and gold." And again, when Mrs. Delany and the Duchess visit Windsor, we hear something more of royal costumes. They are all in "violet blue armozine, with gauze aprons, the Queen the addition of many fine pearls." The manners of the young princesses are all that could be desired. The little Princess Mary, on one occasion, in her dress of cherry-colored tabby with silver leading strings, having forgotten Mrs. Delany's name, accosts her: "How do you do, Duchess of Portland's friend? and how does your little niece do? I wish you had brought her." This little

great-niece of Mrs. Delany's, Miss Port, becomes in afteryears Mrs. Waddington, mother of Frances Waddington, Baroness Bunsen. Before returning to Miss Burney we will give an extract from one of Miss Port's letters to her father, describing the princesses Mary and Sophia as they appeared about the time Miss Burney first knew them. "We had the three youngest princesses to breakfast with us during their Majesties' absence last week; and I entreated Princess Mary to play a lesson of Handel's that mamma does. I gave her that as my reason for asking for it, so then she, with all the sweetness in the world, played it twice. When Princess Mary finished, Princess Sophia said, 'Now I will play to you if you like it'; and immediately played the Hallelujah Chorus in the Messiah; and she and Princess Mary sung it. Princess Mary has really a fine voice, and Princess Sophia a weak | but sweet one. So between them both I was highly gratified, and I wished for mamma to hear and see them, for they looked like little angels. They are very, very fair, [have] fine blue eyes, and hair exactly like -, which they have a vast deal of, and which curls all down their backs; they go without caps, and are so engaging in their behavior that everybody must love them, and admire those who make them what they are." Have we not the fair-haired little singers before our eyes at the harpsichord or spinet, in their quaint costume, going through the fashionable music of the day, with pretty little Miss Port standing admiringly by?

CHARLOTTE, PRINCESS ROYAL.

ities, even in the midst of their happiest wildnesses and freedom, are at once a surprise and a charm to all who see them." We observe here that, though mention is made of the younger princesses, it is the Princess Mary who is specially noticed. So also on another occasion, when the business of the Queen's toilet is over-it is the King's birthday-Miss Burney watches the royal party go in to breakfast, the King, Queen, and elder princesses, when "a lively 'How d'ye do, Miss Burney? I hope you are well now?' from the sweet Princess Mary, who was entering the anteroom, made me turn from her two charming sisters." The Princess Sophia follows, and then a train of governesses, and finally the little Princess Amelia with her nurse brings up the rear. "Never in tale or fable," adds our enthusiastic Burney, 'were there six sister princesses more lovely." Before leaving the younger trio we will glance at the picture of the little Amelia on the celebration of her birthday, as the royal family appear on the terrace. "The little princess, just turned of three years old, in a robe coat covered with fine muslin, a dressed close cap, white gloves, and a fan, walked on alone and first, highly delighted in the parade, and

Miss Burney puts down in her journal: "This morning I made a little sort of acquaintance with the two younger princesses. I was coming from the Queen's room very early, when I met the Princess Mary, just arrived from the Lower Lodge. She was capering up stairs to her elder sisters, but instantly stopped at sight of me, and then coming up to me, inquired how I did, with all the elegant composure of a woman of maturest age. Amazingly well are all these children brought up. The readiness and the grace of their civil

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