Other imaginative
young men with heads less "level" (to use an American expression) than
that of the great novelist, actually went mad--"clean daft"--the noble
passion of loving loyalty ending in an infatuation as absurd as it was
unhappy. Before the Queen left Kensington Palace she was much annoyed by
the persistent attentions of a provincial admirer, a respectable
gentleman, who labored under the hallucination that it was his destiny
and his duty to espouse the Queen. He may have felt a preference for
private life and rural pleasures, but as a loyal patriot he was ready to
make the sacrifice. He drove in a stylish phaeton every morning to the
Palace to inquire after Her Majesty's health; and on several days he
bribed the men who had charge of the gardens to allow him to assist them
in weeding about the piece of water opposite her apartments, in the fond
hope of seeing her at the windows, and of her seeing him. Every evening,
however, he put on the gentleman of fortune and phaetons, and followed
the Queen and the Duchess in their airings. Drove they fast or drove they
slow, he was just behind them. On their last drive before removing from
Kensington, they alighted in the Harrow Road for a little walk, and were
dismayed at seeing this Mr.
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