Arnold used to call “the great mundane movement,” I have been careful to obey the impulse of the hour.  I have cudgelled my memory for Collections and Recollections suitable to this season of retrospective enthusiasm.  Last week I endeavoured to touch some of the more serious aspects of the Jubilee, but now that the great day has come and gone—­“Bedtime, Hal, and all well”—­a lighter handling of the majestic theme may not be esteemed unpardonable.

Those of my fellow-chroniclers who have blacked themselves all over for the part have acted on the principle that no human life can be properly understood without an exhaustive knowledge of its grandfathers and grandmothers.  They have resuscitated George III. and called Queen Charlotte from her long home.  With a less heroic insistence on the historic method, I leave grandparents out of sight, and begin my gossip with the Queen’s uncles.  Of George IV. it is less necessary that I should speak, for has not his character been drawn by Thackeray in his Lectures on the Four Georges?

    “The dandy of sixty, who bows with a grace,
    And has taste in wigs, collars, cuirasses, and lace;
    Who to tricksters and fools leaves the State and its treasure,
    And, while Britain’s in tears, sails about at his pleasure,”

was styled, as we all know, “the First Gentleman in Europe.”  I forget if I have previously narrated the following instance of gentlemanlike conduct.  If I have, it will bear repetition.  The late Lord Charles Russell (1807-1894), when a youth of eighteen, had just received a commission in the Blues, and was commanded, with the rest of his regiment, to a full-dress ball at Carlton House, where the King then held his Court.  Unluckily for his peace of mind, the young subaltern dressed at his father’s house, and, not being used to the splendid paraphernalia of the Blues’ uniform, he omitted to put on his aiguillette.  Arrived at Carlton House the company, before they could enter the ball-room, had to advance in single file along a corridor in which the old King, bewigged and bestarred, was seated on a sofa.  When the hapless youth who lacked the aiguillette approached the presence, he heard a very high voice exclaim, “Who is this d—­d fellow?” Retreat was impossible, and there was nothing for it but to shuffle on and try to pass the King without further rebuke.  Not a bit of it.  As he neared the sofa the King exclaimed, “Good evening, sir.  I suppose you are the regimental doctor?” and the imperfectly-accoutred youth, covered with confusion as with a cloak, fled blushing into the ball-room, and hid himself from further observation.  And yet the narrator of this painful story always declared that George IV. could be very gracious when the fancy took him; that he was uniformly kind to children; and that on public occasions his manner was the perfection of kingly courtesy.  His gorgeous habits and profuse expenditure made him strangely popular.  The people, though they detested his conduct, thought him “every inch a King.”  Lord Shaftesbury, noting in his diary for the 19th of May 1849 the attempt of Hamilton upon the Queen’s life, writes:—­“The profligate George IV. passed through a life of selfishness and sin without a single proved attempt to take it.  This mild and virtuous young woman has four times already been exposed to imminent peril.”