a protestant succession, he expected to reign. His morals were most culpably neglected: he was permitted to abandon himself to licentious pleasures, apparently without the least restraint; and his habits and ideas at length became irrevocably depraved. It is but justice to add, that this dissolute young man, at an early period of his life, was, it is said, so good-natured, as to have been incapable of wilfully inflicting pain on any human being.

In the twenty-second year of his age he was united, against his inclination, to the Princess Sophia Dorothea, who was then about sixteen. Of the causes which led to this imprudent match, and its unfortunate consequences, the following is a brief narration:-The princess being the only child of the Duke of Zell by his Duchess Eleonora D'Emeirs, (a woman of comparatively mean birth, but great beauty,) and the acknowledged heiress to his dominions, her uncle and aunt, the Elector of Hanover and his wife, were desirous of forming an union between her and their son George Lewis, so that the whole Duchy of Luneburg might devolve upon their descendants. Proposals for a marriage were consequently made by the elector, which met with the decided approbation of the Duke of Zell: but the young princess and her mother felt a strong objection to the alliance; the one, because she disliked her ambitious sisterin-law, the electress, and the other, on account of her attachment to a young Prince of Wolfenbüttel. Nor was the proposed bridegroom himself at all favourable to the match; he having, as well as the princess, set his heart on another object. The paternal authority over these young victims to the Moloch of political expediency was, however, irresistible; and they were united qn the 21st of November, 1682.

The unfortunate princess was neglected, if not hated, by her husband, almost from the day of their marriage. The palace in which she resided, either by his permission or connivance, was constantly polluted by the presence of his mistresses; and, for a period of ten years, during which she gave birth to two children, afterwards George the Second, King of England, and Sophia Dorothea, Queen of Prussia, she is said to have endured a series of indignities,

which were as irritating as they were unmerited. The sympathy of her brother-in-law, Prince Philip, afforded her great consolation; but it unhappily involved her still more deeply in misfortune. Count Philip de Koenigsmarck, who had previously acquired an infamous notoriety in England, by instigating some wretches to assassinate a Mr. Thynne, was selected, either by the prince or his sister-in-law, to be the bearer of messages between them. The imprudent Sophia treated this vain and ambitious man with so much familiarity, as to excite suspicions derogatory to her honour; which were considerably increased by a report, that Koenigsmarck had boasted of his peculiar influence over her, during a drunken frolic, at the court of Denmark. On his return to Hanover, he was narrowly watched, by command of the elector; who, discovering that stolen interviews actually took place between his daughter-in-law and the count, peremptorily ordered the latter to join Prince Philip in Hungary. The count, however, prevailed on the princess to allow him a farewell audience, and he was admitted to her bed-chamber at midnight. The elector, by means of his emissaries, received immediate intelligence of the circumstance; and, in a paroxysm of rage, he placed two of his guards in a passage which led to the apartment of the princess, with orders to intercept Koenigsmarck's retreat, and despatch him on the spot. They, accordingly, stabbed the count to the heart as he attempted to retire, and threw his body into the common sewer of the palace. The princess was shortly afterwards placed in confinement at the castle of Dahlen, whence she was, some time after, removed, on the approach of a French army, and sent home to her father and mother; but after a year's residence at Zell, notwithstanding the importunities of her parents that she might remain with them, she was taken back to Dahlen, where she died, a few months only before her husband. She was never acknowledged by George the First as his queen; being, for the last twenty years of her life, spoken of only as Princess of Zell.

It has been asserted, that the sole object on her part, in her interviews

with Koenigsmarck, whatever might have been his motives, and notwithstanding the familiarity with which she treated him, decidedly was to make arrangements for her flight from the electoral palace, where she was constantly insulted by the presence of her husband's concubines, to seek an asylum in France; pursuant to the advice of her friend, Prince Philip, communicated to her through their mutual confidant, the count. That her crime was merely imprudence, has been surmised from the alleged fact, that George twice made proposals of reconciliation to her: first, on his father's death; and, secondly, on his accession to the English crown. She, however, indignantly refused his offers, saying, "If I am guilty, I am not worthy of him: if I am innocent, he is not worthy of me!"

The taste exhibited by the prince, in the selection of his mistresses, was outrageously bad. One of them, Mademoiselle Schulemberg, maid of honour to his mother, and afterwards Duchess of Kendal, was so destitute of charms, that one evening, while she was waiting behind the chair of the electress at a ball, the latter said, in English, to Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk, and one of the mistresses of George the Second, "Look at that tall mawkin, and think of her being my son's passion!" By this lady, George had a daughter, the Countess of Walsingham, afterwards married to Lord Chesterfield; and some reasons exist for supposing that he was actually united to her, by what is denominated, in Germany, a left-handed marriage, which imparts none of the privileges of royalty to the wife, nor the rights of inheritance to her children. His other acknowledged mistress, Madame Kilmansegge, Countess of Platen, afterwards created Countess of Darlington, by whom he also had a daughter, the future Lady Howe, was an absolutely gigantic figure, as corpulent and ample as the duchess was long and emaciated. She is described as having had large, fierce, black eyes, rolling beneath lofty arched eye-brows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck that overflowed and was not distinguishable from the lower part of her body, and no portion of which was restrained by stays.

On the death of his father, in 1698, George succeeded to the electorate; and rather a favourable change took place in his character: so that he acquired a degree of respectability which, from his previous follies, could scarcely have been anticipated. He was placed at the head of the imperial army, after the battle of Blenheim; but the jealousies of his confederates induced him to give up his command, after having retained it during three campaigns. He did not, however, on this occasion withdraw his own forces from the allied army.

Attached to his native country, and contented with his electoral dignities, he seems to have viewed his splendid prospects, as the successor to the throne of Great Britain, with remarkable indifference, and to have left his interests to the gratuitous protection of his adherents. Queen Anne, who had long been in a declining state, wearied, or to speak more properly, tortured, by the cabals of a divided cabinet, some members of which favoured her own latent wish for the restoration of her brother, while the remainder were furious partisans of the House of Hanover, at length sunk into a lethargic condition, which terminated in her death, on the 1st of August, 1714: and the elector was immediately proclaimed by the name of George the First.

Late in the evening of the 5th of August, Lord Clarendon, the English ambassador at the court of Hanover, having received an express announcing the royal demise, repaired with all possible haste to the palace of Herenhausen; at two hours after midnight he entered the chamber of the elector, and, kneeling, saluted him King of Great Britain: but the ambassador's homage, it appears, was received with mortifying serenity.

The sovereign appeared to be exceedingly secure of his new subjects; for, when some one in his presence spoke of the dangerous principles of the presbyterians, and alluded to the death of Charles the First, he replied, with a pleasant indifference, "I have nothing to fear, for the king-killers are all on my side." He seemed in no haste to leave Herenhausen; nor did he commence his journey till the 31st of August. On the eve of his departure, he ordered the