missioned to take him. He strove to cut his way through the four men, and wounded more than one of them. They fell upon him; cut him down; and, as he was lying wounded on the ground, the Countess, his enemy, whom he had betrayed and insulted, came out and beheld him prostrate. He cursed her with his dying lips, and the furious woman stamped upon his mouth with her heel. He was despatched presently; his body burnt the next day; and all traces of the man disappeared. The guards who killed him were enjoined silence under severe penalties. The princess was reported to be ill in her apartments, from which she was taken in October of the same year, being then eightand-twenty years old, and consigned to the castle of Ahlden, where she rcmained a prisoner for no less than thirty-two years. A separation had been pronounced previously between her and her husband. She was called henceforth the "Princess of Ahlden," and her silent husband no more uttered her name. Four years after the Königsmarck catastrophe, Ernest Augustus, the first Elector of Hanover, died, and George Louis, his son, reigned in his stead. Sixteen years he reigned in Hanover, after which he became, as we know, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith. The wicked old Countess Platen died in the year 1706. She had lost her sight, but nevertheless the legend says that she constantly saw Königsmarck's ghost by her wicked old bed. And so there was an end of her. In the year 1700, the little Duke of Gloucester, the last of poor Queen Anne's children, died, and the folks of Hanover straightway became of prodigious importance in England. The Electress Sophia was declared the next in succession to the English throne. George Louis was created Duke of Cambridge; grand deputations were sent over from our country to Deutschland; but Queen Anne, whose weak heart hankered after her relatives at St. Germains, never could be got to allow her cousin, the Elector Duke of Cambridge, to come and pay his respects to her Majesty, and take his seat in her House of Peers. Had the Queen lasted a month longer; had the English Tories been as bold and resolute as they were clever and crafty; had the Prince whom the nation loved and pitied been equal to his fortune, George Louis had never talked German in St. James's Chapel Royal. to "the When the crown did come George Louis he was in no hurry about putting it on. He waited at home for awhile; took an affecting farewell of his dear Hanover and Herrenhausen; and set out in the most leisurely manner to ascend throne of his ancestors," as he called it in his first speech to Parliament. He brought with him a compact body of Germans, whose society he loved, and whom he kept round the royal person. He had his faithful German chamberlains; his German secretaries; his negroes, captives of his bow and spear in Turkish wars; his two ugly, elderly German favorites, Mesdames of Kielmansegge and Schulenberg, whom he created respectively Countess of Darlington and Duchess of Kendal. The Duchess was tall, and lean of stature, and hence was irreverently nicknamed the Maypole. The Countess was a large-sized noblewoman, and this elevated personage was denominated the Elephant. Both of these ladies loved Hanover and its delights; clung round the linden-trees of the great Herrenhausen avenue, and at first would not quit the place. Schulenberg, in fact, could not come on account of her debts; but finding the Maypole would not come, the Elephant packed up her trunk and slipped out of Hanover, unwieldy as she was. On this the Maypole straightway put herself in motion, and followed her beloved George Louis. One seems to be speaking of Captain Macheath, and Polly, and Lucy. The king we had selected; | Melusina, come, my honest Sophia, the courtiers who came in his train; the English nobles who came to welcome him, and on many of whom the shrewd old cynic turned his back - I protest it is a wonderful satirical picture. I am a citizen waiting at Greenwich pier, say, and crying hurrah for King George; and yet I can scarcely keep my countenance, and help laughing at the enormous absurdity of this advent! let us go into my private room, and have some oysters and some Rhine wine, and some pipes afterwards: let us make the best of our situation; let us take what we can get, and leave these bawling, brawling, lying English to shout, and fight, and cheat, in their own way!" If Swift had not been committed to the statesmen of the losing side, what a fine satirical picture we might have had of that general sauve qui peut amongst the Tory party! How mum the Tories became; how the House of Lords and House of Commons chopped round; and how decorously the majorities welcomed King George! Bolingbroke, making his last Here we are, all on our knees. Here is the Archbishop of Canterbury prostrating himself to the head of his church, with Kielmansegge and Schulenberg with their ruddled cheeks grinning behind the defender of the faith. Here is my Lord Duke of X Marlborough kneeling too, the greatest warrior of all times; he who be- speech in the House of Lords, pointed trayed King William-betrayed out the shame of the peerage, where King James II. - betrayed Queen several lords concurred to condemn in Anne betrayed England to the one general vote all that they had apFrench, the Elector to the Pretender, proved in former parliaments by many the Pretender to the Elector; and particular resolutions. And so their here are my Lords Oxford and Boling-conduct was shameful. St. John had broke, the latter of whom has just the best of the argument, but the tripped up the heels of the former; worst of the vote. Bad times were and if a month's more time had been come for him. He talked philosophy, allowed him, would have had King and professed innocence. He courted James at Westminster. The great retirement, and was ready to meet Whig gentlemen made their bows persecution; but, hearing that honest and congées with proper decorum and Mat Prior, who had been recalled ceremony; but yonder keen old from Paris, was about to preach reschemer knows the value of their loy-garding the past transactions, the alty. 66 ." he must think, Loyalty,' philosopher bolted, and took that magnificent head of his out of the ugly reach of the axe. Oxford, the lazy and good-humored, had more courage, and awaited the storm at home. He and Mat Prior both had lodgings in the Tower, and both brought their heads safe out of that dangerous menagerie. When Atterbury was carried off to the same den a few years afterwards, and it was asked, what next should be done with him? "Done with him? Fling him to the lions," Cadogan said, Marlborough's lieutenant. But the British lion of those days did not care much for drinking the blood of peaceful peers and poets, or crunching the bones of as applied to me it is absurd! There are fifty nearer heirs to the throne than I am. I am but an accident, and you fine Whig gentlemen take me for your own sake, not for mine. You Tories hate me; you archbishop, smirking on your knees, and prating about Heaven, you know I don't care a fig for your Thirty-nine Articles, and can't understand a word of your stupid sermons. You, my Lords Bolingbroke and Oxford-you know you were conspiring against me a month ago; and you, my Lord Duke of Marlborough-you would sell me or any man else, if you found your advantage in it. Come, my good bishops. Only four men were executed | are off via Harwich and Helvoetsluys, in London for the rebellion of 1715; and twenty-two in Lancashire. Above a thousand taken in arms, submitted to the King's mercy, and petitioned to be transported to his Majesty's colonies in America. I have heard that their descendants took the loyalist side in the disputes which arose sixty years after. It is pleasant to find that a friend of ours, worthy Dick Steele, was for letting off the rebels with their lives. for dear old Deutschland. The King God save him!-lands at Dover, with tumultuous applause; shouting multitudes, roaring cannon, the Duke of Marlborough weeping tears of joy, and all the bishops kneeling in the mud. In a few years, mass is said in St. Paul's; matins and vespers are sung in York Minster; and Dr. Swift is turned out of his stall and deanery house at St. Patrick's, to give place to Father Dominic, from Salamanca. All these changes were possible then, and once thirty years afterwards all this we might have had, but for the pulveris exigui jactu, that little toss of powder for the hair which the Scotch conspirators stopped to take at the tavern. As one thinks of what might have been, how amusing the speculation is! We know how the doomed Scottish gentlemen came out at Lord Mar's summons, mounted the white cockade, that has been a flower of sad poetry ever since, and rallied round the ill-omened Stuart standard at You understand the distinction I Braemar. Mar, with 8,000 men, and would draw between history-of but 1,500 opposed to him, might have which I do not aspire to be an exdriven the enemy over the Tweed, and pounder and manners and life such taken possession of the whole of Scot- as these sketches would describe. The land; but that the Pretender's Duke rebellion breaks out in the north; its did not venture to move when the day story is before you in a hundred volwas his own. Edinburgh Castle might umes, in none more fairly than in the have been in King James's hands; excellent narrative of Lord Mahon. but that the men who were to esca- The clans are up in Scotland; Derlade it staid to drink his health at wentwater, Nithsdale and Forster are the tavern, and arrived two hours too in arms in Northumberland these late at the rendezvous under the cas- are matters of history, for which tle wall. There was sympathy enough you are referred to the due chroniclers. in the town the projected attack The Guards are set to watch the seems to have been known there streets, and prevent the people wearLord Mahon quotes Sinclair's account ing white roses. I read presently of a of a gentleman not concerned, who couple of soldiers almost flogged to told Sinclair, that he was in a house death for wearing oakboughs in their that evening where eighteen of them hats on the 29th of May - another were drinking, as the facetious land- badge of the beloved Stuarts. It is lady said, "powdering their hair," with these we have to do, rather than for the attack on the castle. Suppose the marches and battles of the armies they had not stopped to powder their to which the poor fellows belonged hair? Edinburgh Castle, and town, with statesmen, and how they looked, and all Scotland were King James's. and how they lived, rather than with The north of England rises, and measures of State, which belong to marches over Barnet Heath upon history alone. For example, at the London. Wyndham is up in Somer- close of the old Queen's reign, it is setshire; Packington in Worcester-known the Duke of Marlborough left shire; and Vivian in Cornwall. The the kingdom after what menaces, Elector of Hanover, and his hideous mistresses, pack up the plate, and perhaps the crown jewels in London, and after what prayers, lies, bribes offered, taken, refused, accepted; after what dark doubling and tacking, let his tory, if she can or dare, say. The old hostel in Ludgate Hill, the "Belle Queen dead; who so eager to return Sauvage" to whom the "Spectator' as my lord duke? Who shouts God so pleasantly alludes in that paper; save the King! so lustily as the great and who was, probably, no other conqueror of Blenheim and Malpla- than the sweet American Pocahontas, quet? (By the way, he will send who rescued from death the daring over some more money for the Pre- Captain Smith. There is the "Lion's tender yet, on the sly.) Who lays Head," down whose jaws the "Spechis hand on his blue ribbon, and lifts tator's own letters were passed; and his eyes more gracefully to heaven over a great banker's in Fleet Street, than this hero? He makes a quasi- the effigy of the wallet, which the triumphal entrance into London, by founder of the firm bore when he came Temple Bar, in his enormous gilt into London a country boy. People coach and the enormous gilt coach this street, so ornamented, with breaks down somewhere by Chancery crowds of swinging chairmen, with Lane, and his highness is obliged to servants bawling to clear the way, get another. There it is we have Mr. Dean in his cassock, his lackey him. We are with the mob in the marching before him; or Mrs. Dinah crowd, not with the great folks in in her sack, tripping to chapel, her the procession. We are not the His- footboy carrying her ladyship's great toric Muse, but her ladyship's atten- prayer-book; with itinerant tradesdant, tale-bearer - valet de chambre · men, singing their hundred cries (I for whom no man is a hero; and, remember forty years ago, as boy in as yonder one steps from his carriage London city, a score of cheery, familto the next handy conveyance, we iar cries that are silent now). Fancy take the number of the hack; we look the beaux thronging to the chocolateall over at his stars, ribbons, embroid- houses, tapping their snuff-boxes as ery; we think within ourselves, O you they issue thence, their periwigs apunfathomable schemer! O you war-pearing over the red curtains. Fancy rior invincible! O you beautiful smiling Judas! What master would you not kiss or betray? What traitor's head, blackening on the spikes on yonder gate, ever hatched a tithe of the treason which has worked under your periwig? We have brought our Georges to London city, and if we would behold its aspect, may see it in Hogarth's lively perspective of Cheapside, or read of it in a hundred contemporary books which paint the manners of that age. Our dear old " Spectator" looks smiling upon the streets, with their innumerable signs, and describes them with his charming humor. "Our streets are filled with Blue Boars, Black Swans, and Red Lions, not to mention Flying Pigs and Hogs in Armor, with other creatures more extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africa." A few of these quaint old figures still remain in London town. You may still see there, and over its Saccharissa, beckoning and smiling from the upper windows, and a crowd of soldiers brawling and bustling at the door- gentlemen of the Life Guards, clad in scarlet, with blue facings, and laced with gold at the seams; gentlemen of the Horse Grenadiers, in their caps of sky-blue cloth, with the garter embroidered on the front in gold and silver; men of the Halberdiers, in their long red coats, as bluff Harry left them, with their ruff and velvet flat caps. Perhaps the King's Majesty himself is going to St. James's as we pass. If he is going to Parliament, he is in his coach-andeight, surrounded by his guards and the high officers of his crown. Otherwise his Majesty only uses a chair, with six footmen walking before, and six yeomen of the guard at the sides of the sedan. The officers in waiting follow the King in coaches. It must be rather slow work. Our " Spectator" and "Tatler" are full of delightful glimpses of the town life of those days. In the company of that charming guide, we may go to the opera, the comedy, the puppet-show, the auction, even the cockpit: we can take boat at Temple Stairs, and accompany Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. Spectator to Spring Garden it will be called Vauxhall a few years hence, when Hogarth will paint for it. Would you not like to step back into the past, and be introduced to Mr. Addison? not the Right Honorable Joseph Addison, Esq., George I.'s Secretary of State, but to the delightful painter of contemporary manners; the man who, when in good-humor himself, was the pleasantest companion in all England. I should like to go into Lockit's with him, and drink a bowl along with Sir R. Steele (who has just been knighted by King George, and who does not happen to have any money to pay his share of the reckoning). I should not care to follow Mr. Addison to his secretary's office in Whitehall. There we get into politics. Our business is pleasure, and the town, and the coffee-house, and the theatre, and the Mall. Delightful Spectator! kind friend of leisure hours! happy companion! true Christian gentleman! How much greater, better, you are than the King Mr. Secretary kneels to! You can have foreign testimony about old-world London, if you like; and my before-quoted friend, Charles Louis, Baron de Pöllnitz, will conduct us to it. "A man of sense," says he, or a fine gentleman, is never at a loss for company in London, and this is the way the latter passes his time. He rises late, puts on a frock, and, leaving his sword at home, takes his cane, and goes where he pleases. The park is commonly the place where he walks, because 'tis the Exchange for men of quality. 'Tis the same thing as the Tuileries at Paris, only the park has a certain beauty of simplicity which cannot be described. The rand walk is called the Mall; is full of people at every hour of the day, but especially at morning and evening, when their Majesties often walk with the royal family, who are attended only by a half-dozen yeomen of the guard, and permit all persons to walk at the same time with them. The ladies and gentlemen always appear in rich dresses, for the English, who, twenty years ago, did not wear gold lace but in their army, are now embroidered and bedaubed as much as the French. I speak of persons of quality; for the citizen still contents himself with a suit of fine cloth, a good hat and wig, and fine linen. Everybody is well clothed here, and even the beggars don't make so ragged an appearance as they do elsewhere." After our friend, the man of quality, has had his morning or undress walk in the Mall, he goes home to dress, and then saunters to some coffee-house or chocolate-house frequented by the persons he would see. For 'tis a rule with the English to go once a day at least to houses of this sort, where they talk of business and news, read the papers, and often look at one another without opening their lips. And 'tis very well they are so mute for were they all as talkative as people of other nations, the coffee-houses would be intolerable, and there would be no hearing what one man said where they are so many. The chocolate-house in St. James's Street, where I go every morning to pass away the time, is always so full that a man can scarce turn about in it." Delightful as London city was, King George I. liked to be out of it as much as ever he could; and when there, passed all his time with his Germans. It was with them as with Blucher, 100 years afterwards, when the bold old Reiter looked down from St. Paul's, and sighed out, "Was für Plunder!" The German women plundered; the German secretaries plundered; the German cooks and intendants plundered; even Mustapha and Mahomet, the German negroes, B |