authorities acted vigorously, and, without any trial or process of law, shipped the boy Jones off to sea.  A year later his ship put into Portsmouth to refit, and he at once disembarked and walked to London.  He was re-arrested before he reached the Palace, and sent back to his ship, the Warspite.  On this occasion it was noticed that he had “much improved in personal appearance and grown quite corpulent;” and so the boy Jones passed out of history, though we catch one last glimpse of him in 1844 falling overboard in the night between Tunis and Algiers.  He was fished up again; but it was conjectured—­as one of the Warspite’s officers explained in a letter to The Times—­that his fall had not been accidental, but that he had deliberately jumped into the Mediterranean in order to “see the life-buoy light burning.”  Of a boy with such a record, what else could be supposed?

But discomfort and alarm were not the only results of the mismanagement of the household; the waste, extravagance, and peculation that also flowed from it were immeasurable.  There were preposterous perquisites and malpractices of every kind.  It was, for instance, an ancient and immutable rule that a candle that had once been lighted should never be lighted again; what happened to the old candles, nobody knew.  Again, the Prince, examining the accounts, was puzzled by a weekly expenditure of thirty-five shillings on “Red Room Wine.”  He enquired into the matter, and after great difficulty discovered that in the time of George III a room in Windsor Castle with red hangings had once been used as a guard-room, and that five shillings a day had been allowed to provide wine for the officers.  The guard had long since been moved elsewhere, but the payment for wine in the Red Room continued, the money being received by a half-pay officer who held the sinecure position of under-butler.

After much laborious investigation, and a stiff struggle with the multitude of vested interests which had been brought into being by long years of neglect, the Prince succeeded in effecting a complete reform.  The various conflicting authorities were induced to resign their powers into the hands of a single official, the Master of the Household, who became responsible for the entire management of the royal palaces.  Great economies were made, and the whole crowd of venerable abuses was swept away.  Among others, the unlucky half-pay officer of the Red Room was, much to his surprise, given the choice of relinquishing his weekly emolument or of performing the duties of an under-butler.  Even the irregularities among the footmen, etc., were greatly diminished.  There were outcries and complaints; the Prince was accused of meddling, of injustice, and of saving candle-ends; but he held on his course, and before long the admirable administration of the royal household was recognised as a convincing proof of his perseverance and capacity.