therefore the act was imperative on him to enter his son, before he had attained his fourteenth year. The policy or the prudence of entering him at all, becomes in itself a very questionable matter, at the same time it must be admitted, that the professions of the army and navy, were the only ones open into which the King's sons could be received, at the same time, that they are the two professions of all others, from which they should be excluded, or if not wholly excluded, they should be prevented from ever assuming the command. If we follow the entire career of all the King's sons, in their professional capacity, what is the result, but disgrace, discomfiture, and dishonour? The Prince of Wales was a soldier, although the laws of the country, prevented him from fulfilling the most essential part of the duty of a soldier, that of fighting; but as far as the cut of a uniform, or the adjustment of any military frippery was concerned, he was one of the most active members of the army. If we look to the Duke of York, what do we there behold, but the country overwhelmed with disgrace, by his blundering generalship? By him. was the flower of the English army destroyed; the finest park of artillery, which ever left the shores of England, taken by the enemy; himself and his whole army saved from being carried prisoners into France, by one of the most ignominious treaties, which was ever signed by a British General, one article of which was, that the French sailors then in the different prisons of England, amounting to above 8000 men should be released, which enabled France to man her navy, to form a junction with the Spanish fleet, and of which Nelson gave so good an account at the Battle of Trafalgar. If any other individual, but a King's son had so misconducted himself, as the Duke of York did on every occasion in Holland, he would have been instantly brought to a court-martial, and dismissed the service for incompetency.

Of the Duke of Clarence, we shall have occasion to describe his exploits, as they respectively come under our notice, but in the mean time, it must be observed, that he only appears before us as the commanded, not as the commander,

He was never at the head of a fleet, nor does history record any great achievement performed by him, as the result of his own personal skill and prowess.

If we direct our view to the Duke of Kent, another soldier, and one more obnoxious or hated by the troops which he commanded, never stood at the head of a regiment. His friends called him a disciplinarian, those whom he commanded, called him a tyrant; his friends compared him to Frederic of Prussia, his soldiers looked upon him, as the haughtiest of the Indian despots. At Halifax in Nova Scotia, the army would have mutinied, had he not been removed-and he was removed to Gibraltar, and it soon became necessary to remove him to England, or it is not at all improbable, that he would have been removed from the world altogether.

If we look to the Duke of Cumberland, another soldier, what do we there find to gratify our vision? A man, who we are informed has done much for the army-and what is that much? He has added much to the expence of our army, by the introduction of German frippery, and the most ridiculous gewgaws; he has contributed much to render our soldiers, a multitude of bedizened fops, and he has so much encumbered them with trappings and helmets of an unbearable weight, that they frequently faint under them. If this then happens at a common parade, what must be the case in the day of battle? The Duke of Cumberland, we beg his pardon, the King of Hanover, has punctually attended all the reviews on the continent, where thousands are collected at the nod of the continental despots, to enslave the liberties of Europe, and what did he bring back with him to his native country? new styles of dresses, new harlequin uniforms, new patterns of caps and helmets, stays, padding, and mustachios. He has, indeed, done much for the army, and too much have the people of this country paid him for it.

If we look to the Duke of Cambridge, another soldier, what do we there find to make us fall in love with royal Field Marshals? We do not mean to speak in the slightest degree

disparagingly of the character of the Duke of Cambridge. He has been so long isolated in Hanover, that the people of this country have nearly forgotten him; but as he holds the rank of Field Marshal in the English army, we are naturally led to inquire into the extent of his services by which he has rendered himself worthy of so distinguished a rank. History, however, is totally silent on that subject, and, therefore, we take it for granted, that no such services exist.

The late Duke of Gloucester was also a soldier, he was, however, a good and honest man, and, therefore, we will throw a veil over his defects as a soldier.

We have thus entered into a kind of crowquis of the advantages which this country has derived from the admission of the sons of George III., into the military profession; it was one way of adding to their incomes, and investing them with a certain degree of patronage, which was sometimes employed for the basest and vilest purposes, and we have only to advert to the manner in which the Duke of York abused his patronage, during his connexion with Mrs. Clarke, to establish the verity of our statement.

It is, however, to the entrance of Prince William into the navy, that we have now principally to direct our attention, and we can state, contrary to the generally received opinion, that the navy was not the choice of the royal youth, but that it was in a great degree forced upon him by his father. He frequently expressed his dissent to the designs which his father had in view; and he expostulated with his mother as to the hardship of his being sent away from home, and all the pleasures of such a splendid home, to be cooped up in a ship, when his brothers were allowed to remain at home in the full enjoyment of their youthful amusements, and with the prospect of a life of continued pleasure opening upon them. The character of George III., was mulish, and obstinate to the very last degree, and if like Don Quixote, he had once made. up his mind to believe that a windmill was a giant, it was in vain to attempt to drive the crotchet out of his head. The

Queen was by no means ignorant of this trait in his character, and she has often experienced the effect of his hasty temper in endeavouring to dissuade him from any object on which he had fixed his mind, and from the execution of which she could not augur any good. He was, morally and politically considered, an ass, that will have a way of its own, and the more you attempt to drive it into the proper path, the more determined it appears to persevere in the wrong one. In the visions of George III., he saw his son William on the quarter-deck of his ship, the noblest station under Heaven that a man carr fill, and he saw his name enrolled in the list of those heroes, who are England's glory, and England's pride, and which will be pronounced with a patriot's enthusiasm, when such emmets as your Miguels, or your Carloses, or your Kings of Hanover, are smothered in their native dust.

The feelings of the mother were called into action, as the time approached, when her domestic circle was to be deprived of one of its ornaments, for although she was no stranger to ambition, and would gladly have seen it ruling the actions of her children; yet, she could not eradicate the opinion from her mind, that the interests of her son, in regard to his mental attainments, had been sacrificed to the visionary glory of a professional life, and one too, which was attended with so much danger and hardship. It must also be taken into consideration, that Prince William entered the British navy, at one, perhaps, of the most inauspicious periods of our history; and it may not be irrelevant in this place to show the state of the British navy at that time, involved as we were in a disastrous and unnatural war in the principal scenes of which, it was the fate of Prince William to bear a conspicuous part.

The American war, had now continued for nearly three years, marked by various successes, and defeats; and in the months of July 1778, Lord Howe after landing the troops under Sir Henry Clinton at New York, received intelligence by his cruisers, that Count D'Estaign, who had sailed from Toulon in April, was arrived on the coast of Virginia, and on

the 11th of July, he appeared off Sandy Hook, with twelve sail of the line, and three large frigates, to which Lord Howe could oppose only eleven ships of inferior magnitude, and weight of metal, with some frigates and sloops. These being ranged with great skill in the harbour, the Count after remaining at anchor for eleven days, set sail to the southward or far as the mouth of the Delaware, and then changed his course for Rhode Island, in order to co-operate with General Sullivan in the enterprise against Newport. The approach of the French fleet to this harbour, created the unpleasant necessity of burning the Orpheus, Lark, Juno, and Cerberus frigates, and of sinking the Flora, and Falcon. But this was the only loss resulting from so formidable an invasion.

The dispersion of the fleets occasioned the accidental meeting of single ships, and produced various engagements, which terminated greatly to the honour of British valour, and seamanship. In the evening of the 13th of August, Captain Dawson in the Renown of 50 guns, fell in with the Languedoc of 84 guns, D'Estaing's own ship, which had lost her rudder and masts, and had the prospect of effecting so extraordinary a capture, when the appearance of several other ships of the squadron, compelled him to desist. Commodore Hothan in the Preston of 50 guns, fought the Tonnant of 80, the same evening, with some success; but the most brilliant of these contests occurred in the afternoon of the 16th, when the Isis a ship also of 50 guns, commanded by Captain Rayner, was chased by the Cæsar, a French ship of 74, in no way injured by the storm, and after a desperate conflict, which lasted for an hour and a half, the Cæsar sheered off. The Isis had sustained so much damage in her masts, sails, and rigging, that she was incapable of pursuing, but in other respects, she had been but very little injured; only one man was killed, and fifteen wounded; the French ship was so much damaged in her hull, that she was forced to bear away for Boston, and her killed and wounded amounted to fifty, including in the latter, her captain, the celebrated Bougainville, whose arm was shot off in the action. Lord Howe followed his antagonist to Boston,