l dreamed of “another opportunity,” as an old rebel of the name of
Scott did. There was one exception, in the cruel treatment and death
of Dr. Cameron about 1750 or 1751; but there may be some justification
for his execution, as he was no doubt a “go-between” the Pretender
in France and the few left faithful to him in the north. The Young
Pretender, too, seems to have been as blind as his adherents. Dr. King,
in his _Anecdotes of His Own Time_, states that in 1750 the prince
was in London; but he gives prominence to the undoubted fact that the
real destruction of the party was due to the decadence, physically and
morally, of the last real aspirant to the throne, and to the dread
that his mistress--Walkinshaw--was a paid spy of the house of Hanover,
her sister being housekeeper at Leicester House. Well might one of the
party ask this hopeless scion of a hopeless house, when endeavouring
to separate him from this woman, “What has your family done, sir, thus
to draw down the vengeance of Heaven on every branch of it for so many
ages?” The answer is simple enough. They had done little but bad. Their
kingship was only honourable with those who believed that any sovereign
was divinely appointed. The last of the Stuarts more than proved the
worthlessness of the whole race as far as the English throne was
concerned. Whether, as Scott romantically suggests in _Redgauntlet_,
the Young Pretender ever returned to Great Britain about 1765, is
improbable. Even if he did, his cause was lost, and that by his own
fault. What scion of the house of Stuart but so fell? It is not that
the early members of the house of Hanover were really great or good,
but it was because the last of the house of Stuart were irretrievably
mean and bad that the embers of the Civil War remained such, and never
after 1745 burst into a serious flame.

But while the house of Stuart was declining from mere corruption and
decay, the almost alien house of Hanover was slowly and securely
winning its way into English sympathies. This was natural eno