to imagine that their own wives may prove no more exemplary in their conduct than the wives of those whom they have been accustomed to dishonour. Probably such may have been the secret of the duke's strong aversion to the marriage state. On one occasion he is said to have found great difficulty in evading the importunities of his father, who was desirous that he should unite himself to a Princess of Denmark. The king had actually caused a negotiation to be entered into with the Danish court, and in this dilemma the duke sent to ask the advice of Sir Robert Walpole, scarcely forty-eight hours, it may be remarked, before the death of that minister. Sir Robert recommended that the duke should demand a large marriage settlement. The advice was followed, and his Royal Highness heard nothing more of the match.

Had Walpole's advice been wanting, or had the king refused to compound with his son on this occasion, we cannot doubt, from our knowledge of the duke's character, that his high sense of duty would eventually have induced him to sacrifice his own happiness to the will of his father. Such, indeed, was his reverential respect for the kingly office that we find him on all occasions paying implicit obedience to the commands of his sovereign, even under circumstances where compliance must have been unpalatable in the extreme. He notoriously disliked and despised

his brother Frederick; and yet, had the latter succeeded to the throne, it was said of the duke, and apparently with great justice, that he would have forgotten the errors of the man in his respect for the sovereign, and would have been the first to set an example of obedience to the royal authority. Probably his acquaintance with, and partiality for, the military profession tended in a great degree to impress on him this implicit reverence for superior authority. From his inferiors he exacted the most indiscriminate submission, and to question his will, much more to oppose it, was a crime he never was known to forgive.

The duke served his first campaign in 1743, and the same year fought side by side with his father at the battle of Dettingen, where he received a wound in the calf of his leg. Two years afterward, when he had only just completed his twentyfourth year, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the British forces in Flanders. As the personal courage which he had displayed at the battle of Dettingen formed the single excuse for the English ministry in their selection of so young and inexperienced an officer to fill this high post, the consequences may be easily imagined. On the 11th of May, 1745, was fought the disastrous battle of Fontenoy, in which the allied forces were commanded by the Duke of Cumberland, and the French army by Marshal Saxe; in the lat

ter, Louis the Fifteenth and his son the Dauphin were present in person. On the details of the action there is no necessity to dwell at length. It is sufficient to say that, owing to the rashness and incapacity displayed by the duke and his military advisers, the lives of ten thousand brave soldiers were uselessly sacrificed, and that England, for the first time, was defeated in a battle of importance.

The duke's military capacity appears to have been held in the utmost contempt by his opponent, Marshal Saxe. "The Duke of Cumberland," he said, sarcastically, "is the greatest general of his age, for he has maintained several thousand men on a spot of ground where I should never have thought of billeting so many rabbits." It was after the battle of Fontenoy that an Englishman (who had been taken prisoner), happening to inform some French officers that they had narrowly missed making a captive of the duke, was answered: "We took good care not to do so, for he does us much more service at the head of your army."

Fortunately for the duke, the tidings of the defeat at Fontenoy excited a very different sensation in England to what might reasonably have been expected. On his return, after his disastrous campaign, instead of his conduct being attacked by an angry Parliament, and his person by an enraged mob, he was received by his countrymen with