Court was

composed.

There were the princes of the house in the first class; in the second, the single field-marshal of the army (the contingent was 18,000, Pöllnitz says, and the Elector had other 14,000 troops in his pay). Then follow, in due order, the authorities civil and military, the working privy councillors, the generals of cavalry and infantry, in the third class; the high chamberlain, high marshals of the court, high masters of the horse, the major-generals of cavalry and infantry, in the fourth class; down to the majors, the hofjunkers or pages, the secretaries or assessors, of the tenth class, of whom all were noble.

fancy Herrenhausen waterworks in | Electoral
place of those of Marly: spread the
tables with Schweinskopf, Specksup-
pe, Leberkuchen, and the like deli-
cacies, in place of the French cuisine;
and fancy Frau von Kielmansegge
dancing with Count Kammerjunker
Quirini, or singing French songs
with the most awful German accent:
imagine a coarse Versailles, and we
have a Hanover before us. "I am
now got into the region of beauty,"
writes Mary Wortley, from Hanover
in 1716; "all the women have liter-
ally rosy checks, snowy foreheads and
necks, jet eye-brows, to which may
generally be added coal-black hair.
These perfections never leave them to
the day of their death, and have a
very fine effect by candle-light; but I
could wish they were handsome with
a little variety. They resemble one
another as Mrs. Salmon's Court of
Great Britain, and are in as much
danger of melting away by too nearly
approaching the fire." The sly Mary
Wortley saw this painted scraglio of
the first George at Hanover, the year
after his accession to the British
throne. There were great doings and
feasts there. Here Lady Mary saw
George II. too. "I can tell you, with-
out flattery or partiality," she says,
"that our young prince has all the
accomplishments that it is possible to
have at his age, with an air of spright-
liness and understanding, and a some-
thing so very engaging in his beha-
vior that needs not the advantage of
his rank to appear charming.' I
find elsewhere similar panegyrics upon
Frederick Prince of Wales, George
II.'s son; and upon George III., of
course, and upon George IV. in an
eminent degree. It was the rule to
be dazzled by princes, and people's
eyes winked quite honestly at that
royal radiance.

The Electoral Court of Hanover was numerous pretty well paid, as times went; above all, paid with a regularity which few other European courts could boast of. Perhaps you will be amused to know how the

We find the master of the horse had 1,090 thalers of pay; the high chamberlain, 2,000 - a thaler being about three shillings of our money. There were two chamberlains, and one for the Princess; five gentlemen of the chamber, and five gentlemen ushers; eleven pages and personages to educate these young noblemen such as a governor, a preceptor, a fecht-meister, or fencing master, and a dancing ditto, this latter with a handsome salary of 400 thalers. There were three body and court physicians, with 800 and 500 thalers; a court barber, 600 thalers; a court organist; two musikanten; four French fiddlers; twelve trumpeters, and a bugler; so that there was plenty of music, profane and pious, in Hanover. There were ten chamber waiters, and twentyfour lackeys in livery; a maïtred'hôtel, and attendants of the kitchen; a French cook; a body cook; ten cooks; six cooks' assistants; two Braten masters, or masters of the roast-(one fancies enormous spits turning slowly, and the honest masters of the roast belading the dripping); a pastry-baker; a pie-baker; and finally, three scullions, at the modest remuneration of eleven thalers. In the sugar-chamber there were four pastry-cooks (for the ladies, no doubt); seven officers in the wine and beer cellars; four bread-bakers ;

and five men in the plate-room. | escorting his Highness's coach from There were 600 horses in the Serene Hanover to Herrenhausen; or haltstables no less than twenty teams ing, mayhap, at Madame Platen's of princely carriage horses, eight to a country house of Monplaisir, which team; sixteen coachmen; fourteen lies half-way between the summerpostilions; nineteen ostlers; thirteen palace and the Residenz. helps, besides smiths, carriage-masters, In the good old times of which I horse-doctors, and other attendants am treating, whilst common men of the stable. The female attendants were driven off by herds, and sold were not so numerous: I grieve to to fight the Emperor's enemies on find but a dozen or fourteen of them the Danube, or to bayonet King about the Electoral premises, and Louis's troops of common men on the only two washerwomen for all the Rhine, noblemen passed from court Court. These functionaries had not to court, seeking service from one so much to do as in the present age. prince or the other, and naturally I own to finding a pleasure in these taking command of the ignoble vulsmall-beer chronicles. I like to peo- gar of soldiery which battled and ple the old world, with its every-day died almost without hope of promofigures and inhabitants not so tion. Noble adventurers travelled much with heroes fighting immense from court to court in search of embattles and inspiring repulsed battalions to engage; or statesmen locked up in darkling cabinets and meditating ponderous laws or dire conspiracies as with people occupied with their every-day work or pleasure: my lord and lady hunting in the forest, or dancing in the Court, or bowing to their Serene Highnesses as they pass in to dinner; John Cook and his procession bringing the meal from the kitchen; the jolly butlers bearing in the flagons from the cellar; the stout coachman driving the ponderous gilt wagon, with eight cream-colored horses in housings of scarlet velvet and morocco leather; a postilion on the leaders, and a pair or a half-dozen of running footmen scudding along by the side of the vehicle, with conical caps, long silverheaded maces, which they poised as they ran, and splendid jackets laced all over with silver and gold. I fancy the citizens' wives and their daughters looking out from the balconies; and the burghers over their beer and mumm, rising up, cap in hand, as the cavalcade passes through the town with torch-bearers, trumpeters blowing their lusty cheeks out, and squadrons of jack-booted lifeguardsmen, girt with shining cuirasses, and bestriding thundering chargers,

ployment; not merely noble males, but noble females too; and if these latter were beauties, and obtained the favorable notice of the princes, they stopped in the courts, became the favorites of their Serene or Royal Highnesses; and received great sums of money and splendid diamonds; and were promoted to be duchesses, marchionesses, and the like; and did not fall much in public esteem for the manner in which they won their advancement. In this way Mdlle. de Querouailles, a beautiful French lady, came to London on a special mission of Louis XIV., and was adopted by our grateful country and sovereign, and figured as Duchess of Portsmouth. In this way the beautiful Aurora of Königsmarck travelling about found favor in the eyes of Augustus of Saxony, and became the mother of Marshal Saxe, who gave us a beating at Fontenoy; and in this manner the lovely sisters Elizabeth and Melusina of Meissenbach (who had actually been driven out of Paris, whither they had travelled on a like errand, by the wise jealousy of the female favorite there in possession) journeyed to Hanover, and became favorites of the serene house there reigning.

That beautiful Aurora von Königs

marck and her brother arc wonderful as types of bygone manners, and strange illustrations of the morals of old days. The Königsmarcks were descended from an ancient noble family of Brandenburg, a branch of which passed into Sweden, where it enriched itself and produced several mighty men of valor.

A biography of the wife of George I., by Dr. Doran, has lately appeared, and I confess I am astounded at the verdict which that writer has delivered, and at his acquittal of this most unfortunate lady. That she had a cold selfish libertine of a husband no one can doubt; but that the bad husband had a bad wife is equally clear. She was married to her cousin for money or convenience, as all princesses were married. She was most beautiful, lively, witty, accomplished: his brutality outraged her: his silence and coldness chilled her: his cruelty insulted her. No wonder she did not love him. How could love be a part of the compact in such a marriage as that? With this unlucky heart to dispose of, the poor creature bestowed it on Philip of Königsmarck, than whom a greater scamp does not walk the history of the seventeenth century. A hundred and eighty years after the fellow was thrust into his unknown grave, a Swedish professor lights upon a box Otto's nephew, Aurora's elder of letters in the University Library at brother, Carl Johann of Königs-Upsala, written by Philip and Doromarck, a favorite of Charles II., a thea to each other, and telling their beauty, a dandy, a warrior, a rascal miserable story.

The founder of the race was Hans Christof, a famous warrior and plunderer of the Thirty Years' war. One of Hans's sons, Otto, appeared as ambassador at the court of Louis XIV., and had to make a Swedish speech at his reception before the Most Christian King. Otto was a famous dandy and warrior, but he forgot the speech, and what do you think he did? Far from being disconcerted, he recited a portion of the Swedish Catechism to Catechism to his Most Christian Majesty and his court, not one of whom understood his lingo with the exception of his own suite, who had to keep their gravity as best they might.

over. Besides the Electoral Prince's lovely young wife Sophia Dorothea, Philip had inspired a passion in a hideous old court lady, the Countess of Platen.

of more than ordinary mark, escaped The bewitching Königsmarck had but deserved being hanged in Eng-conquered two female hearts in Hanland, for the murder of Tom Thynne of Longleat. He had a little brother in London with him at this time: as great a beauty, as great a dandy, as great a villain as his elder. This The princess seems to lad, Philip of Königsmarck, also was have pursued him with the fidelity of implicated in the affair; and perhaps many years. Heaps of letters folit is a pity he ever brought his pretty lowed him on his campaigns, and neck out of it. He went over to were answered by the daring advenHanover, and was soon appointed turer. The princess wanted to fly colonel of a regiment of H. E. High- with him; to quit her odious husband ness's dragoons. In early life he had at any rate. She besought her parbeen page in the court of Celle; and ents to receive her back; had a notion it was said that he and the pretty of taking refuge in France and going Princess Sophia Dorothea, who by over to the Catholic religion; had this time was married to her cousin absolutely packed her jewels for flight, George the Electoral Prince, had been and very likely arranged its details in love with each other as children. with her lover, in that last long night's Their loves were now to be renewed, interview, after which Philip of Könot innocently, and to come to a fear-nigsmarck was seen no more. ful end.

Königsmarck, inflamed with drink

there is scarcely any vice of which, I have to deal with her are charmed,

according to his own showing, this gentleman was not a practitioner had boasted at a supper at Dresden of his intimacy with the two Hanoverian ladies, not only with the princess, but with another lady powerful in Hanover. The Countess Platen, the old favorite of the Elector, hated the young Electoral Princess. The young lady had a lively wit, and constantly made fun of the old one. The Princess's jokes were conveyed to the old Platen just as our idle words are carried about at this present day: and so they both hated each other.

So

and fascinated, and bedevilled. How devotedly Miss Strickland has stood by Mary's innocence! Are there not scores of ladies in this audience who persist in it too? Innocent! I remember as a boy how a great party persisted in declaring Caroline of Brunswick was a martyred angel. So was Helen of Greece innocent. She never ran away with Paris, the dangerous young Trojan. Menelaus, her husband, ill-used her; and there never was any siege of Troy at all. was Bluebeard's wife innocent. She never peeped into the closet where The characters in the tragedy, of the other wives were with their heads which the curtain was now about to off. She never dropped the key, or fall, are about as dark a set as eye stained it with blood; and her ever rested on. There is the jolly brothers were quite right in finishing Prince, shrewd, selfish, scheming, lov- Bluebeard, the cowardly brute! Yes, ing his cups and his case (I think his Caroline of Brunswick was innocent; good-humor makes the tragedy but and Madame Laffarge never poisoned darker); his Princess, who speaks her husband; and Mary of Scotland little but observes all; his old painted never blew up hers; and poor Sophia | Jezebel of a mistress; his son, the Dorothea was never unfaithful; and Electoral Prince, shrewd too, quiet, Eve never took the apple-it was a selfish, not ill-humored, and generally cowardly fabrication of the serpent's. silent, except when goaded into fury George Louis has been held up to by the intolerable tongue of his lovely execration as a murderous Bluebeard, wife; there is poor Sophia Dorothea, whereas the Electoral Prince had no with her coquetry and her wrongs, share in the transaction in which and her passionate attachment to her Philip of Königsmarck was scuffled scamp of a lover, and her wild impru-out of this mortal scene. The Prince dences, and her mad artifices, and her insane fidelity, and her furious jealousy regarding her husband (though she loathed and cheated him), and her prodigious falsehoods; and the confidante, of course, into whose hands the letters are slipped; and there is Lothario, finally, than whom, as I have said, one can't imagine a more handsome, wicked, worthless reprobate.

How that perverse fidelity of passion pursues the villain! How madly true the woman is, and how astoundingly she lies! She has bewitched two or three persons who have taken her up, and they won't believe in her wrong. Like Mary of Scotland, she finds adherents ready to conspire for her even in history, and people who

was absent when the catastrophe came. The Princess had had a hundred warnings; mild hints from her husband's parents; grim remonstrances from himself-but took no more heed of this advice than such besotted poor wretches do. On the night of Sunday, the 1st of July, 1694, Königsmarck paid a long visit to the Princess, and left her to get ready for flight. Her husband was away at Berlin; her carriages and horses were prepared and ready for the elopement. Meanwhile, the spies of Countess Platen had brought the news to their mistress. She went to Ernest Augustus, and procured from the Elector an order for the arrest of the Swede. On the way by which he was to come, four guards were com