80
XIV. in an ignorance subservient to their own ambitious views,[1] to apply it to a similar attempt at engrossing power between the Princess Dowager and the Earl of Bute. But whatever were the defects in the course of instruction, or the discouragements to application, or the bias given to the royal pupil, they neither produced an impression of no decided features, nor a counterpart of the Thane himself, whose demeanour was no-ways
- ↑ It is remarkable how extensive a range this evil takes. Mr. Sharp, the surgeon and traveller, writing from Italy near a century ago, tells us that, at the age of fourteen, the principal employment of the Prince Royal of Naples, afterwards Ferdinand IV. was, playing puppets. If we may rely on "A Year in Spain by a young American," the faults of Ferdinand VII. were partly natural, and otherwise the effect of education. Instead of being trained up and instructed with the care necessary to fit him for the high station to which be was born, his youth was not only neglected, but even purposely perverted—Godoy, whose views were of the most ambitious kind, took great pains to debase the character of the heir apparent.—But these instances are not of so much curiosity as a circumstance brought forward at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries, in November, 1832. "Henry Ellis, esq.. Sec., communicated the draft of a letter to Queen Elizabeth, from Lord Paulet, her Majesty's Comptroller, a Treasurer of the Household, and afterwards Marquis of Winchester, written in the year 1571, and giving her Majesty a history of the debt under which she then laboured. He ascribes its origin to the extravagance of her father; stating that on the death of Henry VII. it was discussed in the council whether he young king should be educated "in worldly wisdom," or or in pleasures and amusements; when the sage counsellors,
