The Brighton Road

ted from George the Fourth, who, as Prince, had a palace at either end, and made these fifty-odd miles in a very special sense a Via Regia. It was

k of the Brighton Road, we cannot help thinking of him, I have appropriately p

and of his upbringing: we mostly are. Only the rarest and

PR

have pictured him in very dark colours indeed. But Horace Walpole, perhaps the clearest-headed of this company, shows in his "Last Journals" that from his boyhood the

usion and inadequate training. It was impossible for such a father to appreciate either the qualities or the defects of such a son. "The uncommunicative selfishness and pride of George the Third confined him to domestic virtues," says Walpole, and adds, "Nothin

but so uninformed, that he often said, 'I wish anybody would tell me what I ought to do; nobody gives me any instruction for my conduct.'" The absolute poverty of the instructi

l Highness had learnt nothing but the dialect of footmen and grooms.... He drunk hard, swore, and

hat was the result to be expected, and we cannot join T

her quailed when the Marquis of Anglesey, baited in front of his house and compelled t

adiant by the Old Steyne, hasted all manner of people; prince and prizefighter, statesman and nobleman; beauties noble and ignoble, and all who lived their lives. There he made incautious guests helplessly drunk on the potent old brandy he called "Diabolino," and then exposed them in embarrassing situations; and there-let us remember it

ifty," and was flung into prison for it; and prison is a fitting place for a satirist who is stupid enough to see a misdemeanour in those misfortunes. No o

is not damned for being fat, fifty, and wearing a wig; and it seems a curious code of morality that would have it so; for altho

stake is in comparing those times with these, to the disadvantage of the past. They know nothing of life in the round, and seeing it only in the flat, ca

ad a similar repute when Edward the Seventh was Prince of Wales. Bridge is a fine game, and what, think you, supports the evening newspapers? The news? Certainly: the Betting News. Cock-fighting was a brutal sport, and is now illegal, but is it dead? Oh dear, no. Virtue was n

ver these things. In times when the middle class and the Nonconformist Conscience traditionally lived at Clapham, it mattered comparatively little what excesses were committed; but that class has so increased that it has to be subdivided int