The Reign of George III. - (Continued.) page 11

In balancing accounts at the congress at Paris, there was a resignation on the part of England of the colonies which she had won with so much cost of money and men. Our statesmen never thought of placing some of the enormous sums we had bestowed on the powers we helped against the islands we had conquered. We had dearly purchased them. But Great Britain gave back to France ail the colonies possessed by her in 1792, except Tobago, St. Lucia, and the Isle of France. Still more absurdly, we returned Pondicherry, in the East Indies, as a focus for fresh annoyances there from the French, whom we had expelled at such cost for their meddling and exciting the natives against us. We restored to the French, under certain conditions, the right of fishing on the bank of Newfoundland, as they had enjoyed it in 1783; conditions which they boldly violated, and which the British ministry did not venture to insist on being observed. We gave back also to Spain several islands and colonies; and the same to Holland - namely, Demerara, Essequibo, Berbice, the immense island of Java, and the rich one of Sumatra, retaining only the Cape of Good Hope and the Settlements in Ceylon.

These arrangements being made, the allied sovereigns of Russia and Prussia came over to London on a visit to the prince regent, and to take a look at that wonderful capital which had poured out such torrents of gold to bring up their armies to Paris. With them came the duchess of Oldenburg, the sister of the czar, the two sons of the king of Prussia, and a great number of the victorious field-marshals, generals, princes, dukes, barons, and the like. But the two grand favourites of the people were Hettman Platow, whose Cossacks had charmed the English people so by their wild prowess, and the bluff old marshal Blücher. This was a hero exactly after the British heart, blunt, uncompromising, and, like the English, never knowing when he was beaten. His giving the order to march forward, when the allies in France ordered him to retreat, had, in fact, brought the campaign to its triumphant close. Blücher had a fixed and most rational contempt of diplomatists, whom he dubbed feather-foxes, or, as we phrase it, quill-drivers, and who, he constantly averred, lost generally all the advantages that were gained by the sword by their long talks and long documents. When a certain statesman urged on him that Napoleon must be dethroned, although they themselves retreated, because there was a league formed against him in France, he replied, impatiently, " The rascality of the French is no satisfaction for us. It is we who must pull him down - we! You will, no doubt, do wonders in your wisdom. Patience! You will be led as usual by the nose, and will still go on fawning and diplomatising, until we have the nation again upon us, and the storm bursts over our heads! "

It was, therefore, with just cause that the English of ail classes received the old hero with enthusiasm, although they carried it somewhat to the ridiculous. If discovered Walking abroad, he was so beset by crowds, that, to get a little breathing room, he was obliged to set his back against a wall and keep off his zealous admirers by waving his cane before him. On other occasions he could only make his way through admiring ladies by kissing them in turn. Oxford conferred a doctor's degree upon him, when, smiling at this strange honour, he said - " Make Gneisenau an apothecary, for he it was who prepared my pills." On his reception at Carlton House, the populace pushed their way through the guards and doors as far as the apartments of the prince regent, who, taking his grey-headed guest by the hand, presented him to them, and publicly hung his portrait set in brilliants round his neck. On his passing through the streets, the horses were taken from his carriage, and he was drawn in triumph by the shouting crowd. One fête succeeded another. During the great races at Ascot, the crowd, breaking through the barriers, and insisting upon Blucher showing himself, the prince regent came forward, and politely telling them that he had not yet arrived, led forward the emperor Alexander, who was loudly cheered; but Blucher's arrival was greeted with thunders of applause, far surpassing those bestowed upon the sovereigns. In the Freemasons' Lodge Blucher was received by numbers of ladies, on each of whom he bestowed a salute. At Portsmouth he drank to the health of the English, in the presence of a vast number of people assembled before his windows. The general rejoicing was solely clouded by the insanity of the aged and blind king, and by the disunion existing between the prince regent and his consort, Caroline of Brunswick.

Lord Wellington, on the 14th of June, took leave of his army, with many praises of its gallant and orderly conduct; the bulk of which was now destined to chastise the insolence of the North Americans. He arrived in London on the 23rd, and on the 28th he was admitted to the house of lords as duke of Wellington - for such he had now been created - and on the 1st of July he attended the house of commons, to receive the thanks of the representatives of the nation, and the grant of half a million for the purchase of a suitable estate. In the month of August he proceeded to Paris, as the ambassador of Great Britain. On the 2nd of December the session of 1814 closed, seventy-five million six hundred thousand pounds having been voted for the annual expenditure.