This Danish King was, in truth, an insipid boy; and there appeared no cause for his expensive ramble, though to support it he had laid a tax on all his placemen and pensioners. He took notice of nothing, took pleasure in nothing, and hurried post through most parts of England without attention, dining and supping at seats on the road, without giving himself time enough to remark so much of their beauties as would flatter the great lords who treated him. This indifference was excused in a whisper by Bernsdorffe,[126] his Prime Minister, who attributed it to his Majesty’s extreme short sight, which Bernsdorffe confessed was the great secret of the State. Yet the King’s manner was very civil; and though his person was diminutive and delicate, he did not want graceful dignity. He had taken an early dislike to his Queen, and had disgraced his cousin, the Prince of Hesse, for espousing her interest. Himself was then influenced by the Russians, Bernsdorffe and the Russian Minister governing him entirely; the latter even with rudeness to the Queen. But the King had a favourite, who had still more power over him, Baron Holke, a handsome young man, who attended him in his travels.
Princess Amelie, who felt the dishonourable treatment of her nephew, and who did not dislike to mark it to the public, made a ball and great entertainment for him at Gunnersbury. The King and the Princess Dowager then paid him the same civilities; but to show how much they disliked the precedent, left Princess Amelie out of their entertainments. In France, whither he went next, the literati cried up this young Monarch as a pattern of a patriot King; and it was probably from their praises he imbibed so much merit that at his return to his kingdom he granted to his subjects free liberty of the press.[127] The idea was certainly not instilled into him here by the King or the Princess Dowager.
The promotion of Lord Bottetort to the Government of Virginia had started a new difficulty. Sir Jeffery Amherst was their Governor. His eminent services and the rank of Commander-in-chief, which he had held in the American war, had placed him too high for residence in a single province. Yet the mutinous spirit of that Colony in particular required the presence of a Governor. Lord Hillsborough had hinted this necessity to Sir Jeffery, adding that if he did not choose to go thither, the King would give him a pension equal to that of Governor. Amherst had ever behaved with as much coolness and modesty as sense. His honour started at the word pension--yet not so fiercely but it was thought he would acquiesce; at least Lord Hillsborough, who had not so much delicacy, too lightly conceived the bargain struck, and too officiously to make his court, as Lord Bottetort was a favourite, named him Governor. The event was unfortunate to Amherst, whose wounded pride drew him into discovering too full a fund of vanity, self-interest, and vehement obstinacy. His first step was to resign his regiment. The next, on the Duke of Grafton’s trying to soften him, was to demand a peerage, a grant of the coal mines in America (which it was thought might produce thirty thousand pounds a-year more) and an American peerage, if any were bestowed. To the last the Duke replied at once, that the King had forbidden his naming a peerage for any man.