Charles at thirty-four has
the careless humour of a schoolboy. He is royal in nothing except his
extravagance, which has squandered more millions than I dare mention since
he landed at Dover.
"I am growing almost as sober as my solemn spouse, who will ever be railing
at the King and the Duke, and even more bitterly at the favourite, his
Grace of Buckingham, who is assuredly one of the most agreeable men in
London. I asked Fareham only yesterday why he went to Court, if his
Majesty's company is thus distasteful to him. 'It is not to his company I
object, but to his principles,' he answered, in that earnest fashion of his
which takes the lightest questions _au grand serieux_. 'I see in him a man
who, with natural parts far above the average, makes himself the jest of
meaner intellects, and the dupe of greedy courtesans; a man who, trained
in the stern school of adversity, overshadowed by the great horror of his
father's tragical doom, accepts life as one long jest, and being, by a
concatenation of circumstances bordering on the miraculous, restored to the
privileges of hereditary monarchy, takes all possible pains to prove
the uselessness of kings. I see a man who, borne back to power by the
irresistible current of the people's affections, has broken every pledge he
gave that people in the flush and triumph of his return.
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