earth amid a shower of gold! The melodious chink of doubloons and pieces
of eight echo his first infant wailings! What a theme for the gipsies of
the press--the fortune-tellers of the time! At the present hour that baby
sleeps the last sleep in St. George's chapel; and we have his public and
his social history before us. What does experience--the experience bought
and paid for by hard, hard cash--_now_ read in the "waggons of treasure,"
groaning musically to the rocking-cradle of the callow infant? Simply, the
babe of Queen Charlotte would be a very expensive babe indeed; and that
the wealth of a Spanish galleon was all insufficient for the youngling's
future wants.

We have been favoured, among a series of pictures, with the following of
George the Fourth, exhibited in his babyhood. We are told that "all
persons _of fashion_ were admitted to see the Prince, under the following
restrictions, viz.--that in passing through the apartment _they stepped
with the greatest caution_, and did not offer to touch his Royal Highness.
For the greater security in this respect, a part of the apartment was
latticed off _in the Chinese manner_, to prevent curious persons from
approaching too nearly."

That lattice "in the Chinese manner" was a small yet fatal fore-shadowing
of the Chinese Pavilion at Brighton--of that temple, worthy of Pekin,
wherein the Royal infant of threescore was wont to enshrine himself, not
from the desecrating touch of the world, but even from the eyes of a
curious people, who, having paid some millions toward manufacturing the
most finished gentleman in Europe, had now and then a wish--an unregarded
wish--to look at their expensive handiwork.

What different prognostics have we in the natal day of our present Prince
of Wales! What rational hopes from many circumstances that beset him. The