green chariot on the Brighton road, when we would not have put our heads
out of window to see a procession to the House of Lords. Some kings have
even gone so far in their love of plain life as to drop the king, which is
a very pleasant sort of unkingship. Frederick the Great, at one of his
literary entertainments adopted this plan to promote free conversation,
when he reminded the circle that there was no monarch present, and that
every one might think aloud. The conversation soon turned upon the faults
of different governments and rulers, and general censures were passing
from mouth to mouth pretty freely, when Frederick suddenly stayed the
topic, by saying, "Peace, peace, gentlemen, have a care, the king is
coming; it may be as well if he does not hear you, lest he should be
obliged to be still worse than you." Our Second Charles was very fond of
liberty, and of dropping the king, or as some writers say, he never took
the office up: this was for another purpose, in times when


License they mean when they cry liberty.


Voluntarily parting with one's liberty is, however, very different to
having it taken from us, as in the anecdote of the citizen who never
having been out of his native place during his lifetime, was, for some
offence, sentenced to stay within the walls a whole year; when he died
of grief not long afterwards.

State imprisonment is like a set of silken fetters for kings and other
great people. Thus, almost all our palaces have been used as prisons,
according to the caprice of the monarch, or the violence of the uppermost
faction. Shakspeare, in his historical plays, gives us many pictures of
royal and noble suffering from the loss of liberty. One of the latter,