The careers of the King’s younger brothers and sisters would fill a volume of “queer stories.”  Of the Duke of York Mr. Goldwin Smith genially remarks that “the only meritorious action of his life was that he once risked it in a duel.”  The Duke of Clarence—­Burns’s “Young royal Tarry Breeks”—­lived in disreputable seclusion till he ascended the throne, and then was so excited by his elevation that people thought he was going mad.  The Duke of Cumberland was the object of a popular detestation of which the grounds can be discovered in the Annual Register for 1810.  The Duke of Sussex made two marriages in defiance of the Royal Marriage Act, and took a political part as active on the Liberal side as that of the Duke of Cumberland among the Tories.  The Duke of Cambridge is chiefly remembered by his grotesque habit (recorded, by the way, in Happy Thoughts) of making loud responses of his own invention to the service in church.  “Let us pray,” said the clergyman:  “By all means,” said the Duke.  The clergyman begins the prayer for rain:  the Duke exclaims, “No good as long as the wind is in the east.”

Clergyman:  “’Zacchaeus stood forth and said, Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor.’”

Duke:  “Too much, too much; don’t mind tithes, but can’t stand that.”  To two of the Commandments, which I decline to discriminate, the Duke’s responses were—­“Quite right, quite right, but very difficult sometimes;’” and “No, no!  It was my brother Ernest did that.”

Those who care to pursue these curious byways of not very ancient history are referred to the unfailing Greville; to Lady Anne Hamilton’s Secret History of the Court of England; and to the Recollections of a Lady of Quality, commonly ascribed to Lady Charlotte Bury.  The closer our acquaintance with the manners and habits of the last age, even in what are called “the highest circles,” the more wonderful will appear the social transformation which dates from her Majesty’s accession.  Thackeray spoke the words of truth and soberness when, after describing the virtues and the limitations of George III., he said:  “I think we acknowledge in the inheritrix of his sceptre a wiser rule and a life as honourable and pure; and I am sure that the future painter of our manners will pay a willing allegiance to that good life, and be loyal to the memory of that unsullied virtue.”

For the earlier years of the Queen’s reign Greville continues to be a fairly safe guide, though his footing at the palace was by no means so intimate as it had been in the roistering days of George IV. and William IV.  Of course, her Majesty’s own volumes and Sir Theodore Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort are of primary authority.  Interesting glimpses are to be caught in the first volume of Bishop Wilberforce’s Life, ere yet his tergiversation in the matter of Bishop Hampden had forfeited the Royal favour; and the historian of the future will probably make great use of the Letters of Sarah Lady Lyttelton—­Governess, to the Queen’s children—­which, being printed for private circulation, are unluckily withheld from the present generation.