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-COURT GOSSIP.

soned in one of his fortresses. He relents, however, at the christening; and is put in good humour by a visit from another son and a brother- the first of whom is described as a kind of dwarf and natural fool, who could never take seriously to any employment but catching flies; and the other as a furious madman, in whose company no one was sure of his life. This amiable family party is broken up, by an order on the Princess's husband to join his regiment at Berlin, and another order from her father for her to pay a visit to her sister at Anspach. On her way she visits an ancient beauty, with a nose like a beetroot, and two maids of honour so excessively fat that they could not sit down; and, in stooping to kiss the Princess's hand, fell over, and rolled like balls of flesh on the carpet. At Anspach, she finds the Margrave deep in an intrigue with the housemaid; and consoles her sister under this affliction. She then makes a great effort, and raises money enough to carry her to Berlin; where she is received with coldness and ridicule by the Queen, and neglect and insult by all her sisters. Her brother's marriage with the Princess of Brunswick was just about to take place, and we choose to give in her own words her account of the manner in which she was talked over in this royal circle.

"La reine, à table, fit tomber la conversation sur la princesse royale future. Votre frère,' me dit-elle en le regardant, 'est au désespoir de l'épouser, et n'a pas tort: c'est une vrai bête; elle répond à tout ce qu'on lui dit par un oui et un non, accompagné d'un rire niais qui fait mal au cœur. Oh! dit ma sœur Charlotte, votre Majesté ne connôit pas encore tout son mérite. J'ai été un matin à sa toilette ; j'ai cru y suffoquer; elle exhaloit une odeur insupportable! Je crois qu'elle a pour le moins dix ou douze fistules-car cela n'est pas naturel. J'ai remarqué aussi qu'elle est contrefaite; son corps de jupe est rembourré d'un côté, et elle a une hanche plus haute que l'autre.' Je fus fort étonnée de ces propos, qui se tenoient en présence des domestiques-et surtout de mon frère! Je m'aperçus qu'ils lui faisoient de la peine et qu'il changeoit de couleur. Il se retira aussitôt après souper. J'en fis autant. Il vint me voir un moment après. Je lui demandai s'il étoit satisfait du roi? Il me répondit que sa situation changeoit à tout moment; que tantôt il étoit en faveur et tantôt en disgrâce; que son plus grand bonheur consistoit dans l'absence; qu'il menoit une vie douce et tranquille à son régiment; que l'étude et la musique y faisoient ses principales occupations; qu'il avoit fait bâtir une maison et fait faire un jardin charmant où il pouvoit lire et se promener. Je le pria

PLEASURES OF COURT LIFE.

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de me dire si le portrait que la reine et ma sœur m'avoient fait de la Princesse de Brunswick étoit véritable? Nous sommes seuls,' repartitil, et je n'ai rien de caché pour vous. Je vous parlerai avec sincérité. La reine, par ses misérables intrigues, est la seule source de nos malheurs. A peine avez-vous été partie qu'elle a renoué avec l'Angleterre ; elle a voulu vous substituer ma sœur Charlotte, et lui faire épouser le Prince de Galles. Vous jugez bien qu'elle a employé tous ses efforts pour faire réussir son plan et pour me marier avec la Princesse Amélie.'"

The poor Prince, however, confesses that he cannot say much for the intellect of his intended bride; - and really does not use a much nobler language than the rest of the family, even when speaking in her presence; for on her first presentation to his sister, finding that she made no answer to the compliments that were addressed to her, the enamoured youth encourages her bridal timidity by this polite exclamation, " Peste soit de la bête! remercie donc ma sœur!" The account of the festivities which accompanied this marriage really excites our compassion; and is well calculated to disabuse any inexperienced person of the mistake of supposing, that there can be either comfort or enjoyment in the cumbrous splendours of a court. Scanty and crowded dinners at mid-day-and formal balls and minuets immediately after, in June, followed up with dull gaming in the evening;-the necessity of being up in full dress by three o'clock in the morning to see a review-and the pleasure of being stifled in a crowded tent without seeing any thing, or getting any refreshment for seven or eight hours, and then to return famishing to a dinner of eighty covers; - at other times to travel ten miles at a foot-pace in an open carriage during a heavy rain, and afterwards to stand shivering on the wet grass to see fireworks to pay twenty visits of ceremony every morning, and to present and be presented in stately silence to persons whom you hate and despise. Such were the general delights of the whole court; and our Princess had the additional gratification of being forced from a sick-bed to enjoy them, and of undergoing the sneers of her mother, and the slights of her whole generation. Their domestic life, when these galas were over, was nearly as fatiguing, and still more lugubrious.

170 RETURN TO BAREITH -FAMILY INFIRMITIES.

The good old custom of famishing was kept up at table; and immediately after dinner the King had his great chair placed right before the fire, and snored in it for three hours, during all which they were obliged to keep silence, for fear of disturbing him. When he awoke, he set to smoking tobacco;- and then sate four hours at supper, listening to long stories of his ancestors, in the taste of those sermons which are prescribed to persons afflicted with insomnolency. Then the troops began their exercise under the windows before four o'clock every morning,-and not only kept the whole household awake from that hour by their firing, but sometimes sent a ramrod through the glass to assist at the Princess's toilette. One afternoon the King was seized with a sort of apoplexy in his sleep, which, as he always snored extremely loud, might have carried him off without much observation, had not his daughter observed him grow black in the face, and restored him by timely applications. She is equally unfortunate about the same time in her father-in-law the Margrave, who is mischievous enough to recover, after breaking a blood-vessel by falling down stairs in a fit of drunkenness. At last she gets away with great difficulty, and takes her second leave of the parental roof, with even less regard for its inhabitants than she had felt on first quitting its shelter.

On her return to Bareith, she finds the old Margrave quite broken in health, but extravagantly and honourably in love with a lame, dwarfish, middle-aged lady, the sister of her antient governess, whom he proposes to marry, to the great discomfiture of the Princess and his son. They remonstrate with the lady, however, on the absurdity of such an union; and she promises to be cruel, and live single. In the mean time, one of the Margrave's daughters is taken with a kind of madness of a very indecorous character; which indicates itself by frequent improprieties of speech, and a habit of giving invitations, of no equivocal sort, to every man that comes near her. The worthy Margrave, at first, undertakes to cure this very troublesome complaint by a brisk course

MORE MARRIAGES-PICTURESQUE DEATH OF OLD KING. 171

of beating; but this not being found to answer, it is thought expedient to try the effect of marriage; and, that there may be no harm done to any body, they look out a certain Duke of Weimar, who is as mad as the lady-though somewhat in a different way. This prince's malady consisted chiefly in great unsteadiness of purpose, and a trick of outrageous and inventive boasting. Both the Princess and her husband, however, take great pains to bring about this well-assorted match; and, by dint of flattery and intimidation, it is actually carried through-though the bridegroom sends a piteous message on the morning of his wedding day, begging to be off, and keeps them from twelve till four o'clock in the morning before he can be persuaded to go to bed. In the mean time, the Princess gives great offence to the populace and the preachers of Bareith, by giving a sort of masked ball, and riding occasionally on horseback. Her husband goes to the wars; and returns very much out of humour with her brother Frederic, who talks contemptuously of little courts and little princes. The old Margrave falls into a confirmed hectic, and writes billetsdoux to his little lady, so tender as to turn one's stomach; but at last dies in an edifying manner, to the great satisfaction of all his friends and acquaintances. Old Frederic promises fair, at the same time, to follow his example; for he is seized with a confirmed dropsy. His legs swell, and burst; and give out so much water, that he is obliged for several days to sit with them in buckets. By a kind of miracle, however, he recovers, and goes a campaigning for several years after.

The Memoirs are rather dull for four or five years after the author's accession to the throne of Bareith. She makes various journeys, and suffers from various distempers - has innumerable quarrels with all the neighbouring potentates about her own precedence and that of her attendants; fits up several villas, gives balls; and sometimes quarrels with her husband, and sometimes nurses him in his illness. In 1740 the King her father dies in good earnest; and makes, it must be acknowledged, a truly heroic, though somewhat whimsical,

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ending. Finding himself fast going, he had himself placed early in the morning in his wheel-chair, and goes himself to tell the Queen that she must rise, and see him die. He then takes farewell of his children; and gives some sensible advice to his son, and the ministers and generals whom he had assembled. Afterwards he has his best horse brought, and presents it with a good grace to the oldest of his generals. He next ordered all the servants to put on their best liveries; and, when this was done, he looked on them with an air of derision, and said, "Vanity of vanities!" He then commanded his physician to tell him exactly how long he had to live; and when he was answered, "about half an hour," he asked for a looking-glass, and said, with a smile, that he certainly did look ill enough, and saw "qu'il ferait une vilaine grimace en mourant!" When the clergymen proposed to come and pray with him, he said, "he knew already all they had to say, and that they might go about their business." In a short time after he expired, in great tranquillity.

Though the new King came to visit his sister soon after his accession, and she went to return the compliment at Berlin, she says there was no longer any cordiality between them; and that she heard nothing but complaints of his avarice, his ill temper, his ingratitude, and his arrogance. She gives him great credit for talents; but entreats her readers to suspend their judgment as to the real character of this celebrated monarch, till they have perused the whole of her Memoirs. What seems to have given her the worst opinion of him, was his impolite habit of making jokes about the small domains and scanty revenues of her husband. For the two following years she travels all over Germany, abusing all the principautés she meets with. In 1742, she goes to see the coronation of the new Emperor at Francfort, and has a long negotiation about the ceremony of her introduction to the Empress. After various projets had been offered and rejected, she made these three conditions 1st, That the whole cortège of the Empress should receive her at the bottom of the staircase. 2dly,