notice they had of her immediate danger was her sighing and saying, "I
feel death come very fast upon me!" She repeated the same words
frequently, remained perfectly in her senses and calm, and died about
eleven at night. It is very shocking for anybody so young, so handsome,
so arrived at the height of happiness, to be so quickly snatched away.'

So vanished one of the brightest stars of the court. The same autumn
(1745) was the epoch of a great event; the marching of Charles Edward
into England. Whilst the Duke of Cumberland was preparing to head the
troops to oppose him, the Prince of Wales was inviting a party to
supper, the main feature of which was the citadel of Carlisle in sugar,
the company all besieging it with sugar-plums. It would, indeed, as
Walpole declared, be impossible to relate all the _Caligulisms_ of this
effeminate, absurd prince. But buffoonery and eccentricity were the
order of the day. 'A ridiculous thing happened,' Horace writes, 'when
the princess saw company after her confinement. The new-born babe was
shown in a mighty pretty cradle, designed by Kent, under a canopy in the
great drawing-room. Sir William Stanhope went to look at it. Mrs,
Herbert, the governess, advanced to unmantle it. He said, "In wax, I
suppose?" "Sir?" "In wax, madam?" "The young prince, sir?" "Yes, in wax,
I suppose?" This is his odd humour. When he went to see the duke at his
birth, he said, "Lord, it sees!"'

The recluse of Strawberry was soon consoled by hearing that the rebels
were driven back from Derby, where they had penetrated, and where the
remembrance of the then gay, sanguine, brave young Chevalier long
lingered among the old inhabitants. One of the last traces of his
short-lived possession of the town is gone: very recently, Exeter House,
where he lodged and where he received his adherents, has been pulled
down; the ground on which it stood, with its court and garden--somewhat