presence of the king. As we saw while at Charminster, this incident
led to the founding of a great ducal family.

It is to George III that Weymouth owes its successful career as a
watering place, although a beginning had been made over twenty years
before the King's visit by a native of Bath named Ralph Allen, who
actually forsook that "shrine of Hygeia," to come to Melcombe, where
"to the great wonder of his friends he immersed his bare person in the
open sea." Allen seems to have been familiar with the Duke of Gloucester,
whom he induced to accompany him. So pleased was the Duke with Melcombe,
that he decided to build a house on the front--Gloucester Lodge, now
the hotel of that name--and here to the huge delight of the inhabitants,
George, his Queen and three daughters came in 1789. An amusing account
of the royal visit is given by Fanny Burney. The King was so pleased
with the place that he stayed eleven weeks, and by his unaffected
buorgeois manner and approachableness quickly gained the enthusiastic
loyalty of his Dorset subjects. Miss Burney's most entertaining
reminiscence of the visit is the oft-repeated account of the King's
first dip in the sea. Immediately the royal person "became immersed
beneath the waves" a band, concealed in a bathing machine struck up
"God save Great George our King." Weymouth is in possession of a
keepsake of these stirring times in the statue of His Hanoverian
Majesty that graces(?) the centre of the Esplanade. It is to be hoped
that the town will never be inveigled into scrapping this memorial,
which for quaintness and unconscious humour is almost unsurpassed. A
subject of derisive merriment to the tripper and of shuddering aversion
for those with any aesthetic sense, it is nevertheless an interesting
link with another age and is not very much worse than some other
specimens of the memorial type of a more recent date. It has lately
received a coat of paint of an intense black and the cross-headed wand