“And pray did you drink it?”

“I drink it?—­Drink barley water? no, no; not come to that neither.  But there it was, sure enough!—­in a jug fit for a sick room, just such a thing as you put upon a hob in a chimney, for some poor miserable soul that keeps his bed! just such a thing as that!—­And, ‘Here, Goldsworthy,’ says his majesty, ’here’s the barley water,’”

“And did the king drink it himself?”

“Yes, God bless his majesty! but I was too humble a subject to do the same as the king!—­Barley water, quoth I!—­Ha! ha!—­a fine treat truly!  Heaven defend me!  I’m not 432

come to that, neither!—­bad enough too, but not so bad as that.”

Royal cautions and confidences.

Nov. 1.-We began this month by steadily settling ourselves at Kew.  A very pleasant circumstance happened to me on this day, in venturing to present the petition of an unfortunate man who had been shipwrecked; whose petition was graciously attended to,’and the money he solicited was granted him.  I had taken a great interest in the poor man, from the simplicity and distress of his narration, and took him into one of the parlours to assist him in drawing Up his memorial.

The queen, when, with equal sweetness and humanity, she had delivered the sum to one of her pages to give to him, said to me, “Now, though your account of this poor man makes him seem to be a real object, I must give you one caution :  there are so many impostors about, who will try to speak to you, that, if you are not upon your guard, you may be robbed yourself before you can get any help :  I think, therefore, you had better never trust yourself in a room alone with anybody you don’t know.”

I thanked her for her gracious counsel, and promised, for the future, to have my man always at hand.

I was afterwards much touched with a sort of unconscious confidence with which she relieved her mind.  She asked me my opinion of a paper in the “Tatler,” which I did not recollect; and when she was dressed, and seated in her sitting-room, she made me give her the book, and read to me this paper.  It is an account of a young man of a good heart and sweet disposition, who is allured by pleasure into a libertine life, which he pursues by habit, but with constant remorse, and ceaseless shame and unhappiness.  It was impossible for me to miss her object:  all the mother was in her voice while she read it, and her glistening eyes told the application made throughout.(223) My mind sympathised sincerely, though my tongue did not dare allude to her feelings.  She looked pensively down when she had finished it, and before she broke silence, a page came to announce the Duchess of Ancaster.

433

The queen tired of her Gewgaws.