THE

Royal Wanderer,

OR,

SECRET MEMOIRS OF CAROLINE:

(FOUNDED ON RECENT FACTS.)

"This was the noblest Roman of them all."

SHAKSPEARE.

CHAPTER 1.

THE vicissitudes of human greatness, and the miseries of human power, have been in every country the theme of the poet, and the contemplation of the philosopher. Ages have only combined to read the same moral lessons, and experience still survives to confirm the melancholy truths which they convey to the arrogance of pride, and the splendor of dominion. While it has been the lot of few to realize the delightful charm, which contentment spreads around the boards of all those who are wise enough to seek her, Poverty, bending under its burden, and starving with its wants, has rashly imagined, that those who are furthest removed from the enjoyments of luxury, and pomp, and revelry, are the

B

most truly and exquisitely wretched. It has turned with a repining sigh from its scanty wallet, its bed of straw, its rags of misery, to gaze with rapture on the magnificence of a Court, and the decorations of a table: it has contrasted the superfluous elegancies of a palace, with the desolate emptiness of the hovel. While the tears of unsated hunger have moistened its bitter morsel, its imagination has feasted, with the intensity of envy and desire, on the fancied delicacies of the luxurious banquet. But alas! weak is the mind, and short-sighted is the vision, which penetrate no deeper than the exterior of Royalty; and which pause, in their search, upon the surface only of greatness. Did Poverty know that care and anxiety, and restlessness haunt the regal couch like midnight spectres; that the glittering diadem rarely fails to prove a crown of thorns to its unliappy possessor; that weariness always, and often guilt lurks amidst the glittering trappings of the mighty; that satiety and disgust loathe the costly feast which is spread to woo the sickly appetite; that poison drugs the treacherous bowl; and that treason clothes its gloomy purpose beneath fictitious smiles, and hollow mirth;-would Poverty exchange its wants, its hunger, or its rags, while health smiled upon its daily labor, and peace rested on its nightly slumbers, for the gilded curse of splendid misery?

Few persons have bad more sufficient reason to be satisfied with the truth of these observations, than the illustrious lady, whose chequered life and various fortunes, it is our purpose to record. De