DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

( 3) influence abroad. To this condition it had been raised during the reigns of his two predecessors, who had never exceeded their prerogative by interfering in the powerful administration of their Ministers. Having lost his father (Frederick, Prince of Wales) in his youth, George III. remained under the control of his mother, a narrow-minded and in- triguing woman. She confined his education within the most restricted limits, keeping him in the nursery till within two years of the time he mounted the throne ; and instilled into his mind the most exagge- rated notions of his position, together with an intense desire for personal and independent authority. He never forgot her injunction, ‘George, be a King!’ But though the natural defects of his disposition were aggravated by this mistaken education, they were tempered by nobler qualities. Unostentatious in his manner, religious without affectation or bigotry, a good son, and an excellent husband, a gentleman in every sense of the word, his private life contrasted advantageously with the dissolute fashions of the time. The indolence of his earlier years he overcame, and exhibited the most remarkable application to business. As energetic in his recreations as in his pleasures —on hunting days he remained in the saddle from eight in the morning till dusk—he always maintained in his habits a simplicity and at his table an abstin-