TO A THRUSH. How I do envy thee, thou small brown bird, That sittest on the slowly budding spray Of yonder tree, and all the pale spring day Pourest thy song abroad, till swift upstirred The other birds sing forth their merry song, Singing unheeding or of pain or wrong! I hear thee trilling through the sweet moist air. How free thy music; how it, welling out, Makes the world vocal! What hast thou with doubt? What knowest thou of all we mortals bear? Nor dost thou know that frost must come again! Oh, I am weighted with a world of care! Teach me thy secret, happy bird! I wait great, That crown him in the presence of the earth, That hail him conqueror o'er the ills of birth. What, wilt thou not confide in me to-night? See how the wan moon creeps above the firs, While in the topmost boughs a sad song stirs, Too sad, too sweet, to greet her beauty bright. Then art thou silent as the night glides by, Drawing her garments o'er the saffron sky. I cannot sing, for oh! my heart is sore; Thou hast no past, no future that may bring AN OBERMANNIC EPILOGUE. AMID our little worldly din, Vain to arrest or save, A century of vulgar sin Approaches to its grave. We dare not praise, we would not blame, Ah no, we sages of to-day Refuse to bless or ban; Nothing we do at all, and say As little as we can. Let us have leave to eat and drink Indifferent happy with our lot, We trudge the trodden way; And if there be a God or not We hardly care to say. Could not the old philosophy We have no heart to live our life, We feebly fret, we mildly doubt, The old-world fashions have gone out, Upon the borders of a time, We leave all things undone : God send we hear the morning chime, And live to see the sun! Spectator. THE DEAD SOLDIER AT MT. McGREGOR. Rest as the brave alone may rest; And wheresoe'er in airy splendor That undimmed banner greets our view, Its starry folds with sorrow tender Shall touch our hearts with thoughts of you. The brave you led, the weak you shielded, And those, once foes, who felt your might, Now that the hand which wisely wielded Such power is still, in grief unite. That girdled world whose fame you tasted, That girdled world whose woes you knew, Kneels by your corse, wan now and wasted, And worships on though life is through. Nor place nor people claim your story, Then, soldier, sleep, your task is ended, Milwaukee Sunday Sentinel. From The Quarterly Review. 66 content, if on her tomb could be inscribed the words, "Sophia, queen of Great Brit AMONG the lives of English queens and ain," is irreconcilable with the whole tenor princesses, which have naturally enough of her private thoughts as well as public employed the labors of loyal and industri- acts. Neither, however, will a candid ous compilers, a biography of the elec- enquiry result in the confirmation of the tress Sophia could of course claim no notion, to which the conclusions of an place. She was but "the mother of our able and voluminous living historian, M. kings to be " 'Magna Britanniæ Onno Klopp, are calculated to give color, Hæres," as the inscription runs on her that during part of her life she regarded coffin in the royal vault at Hanover. Yet with indifference, and even with aversion, it is strange that the personal history of a the brilliant prospect opening more or princess whose character and conduct less hopefully before her. She was not, possess so singular an interest in connection with our national history, should never (so far as we are aware) have been made the subject of an English monograph. If the courtly pens of Hanoverian authors (Feder, Malortie, Nöldeke) might formerly have rendered any composition of the kind superfluous, such is hardly the case now, when the publication of the electress's autobiographical memoir, of her correspondence with Leibnitz, and of other valuable remains in the archives of Hanover, has placed a mass of new materials at the disposal of the biographer. It is true that the more her life is known, the less will it be believed to have been consistently devoted to the pursuit of one great object. The legend of her having frequently declared that she should die • 1. Memoiren der Herzogin Sophie, nachmals Kurfürstin von Hannover. Herausgegeben von Dr. 2. Correspondance de Leibniz avec l'électrice Sophie 4. Briefe der Prinzessin Elisabeth Charlotte von Orleans, 1676-1722. (Bibliothek des literarischen Vereins zu Stuttgart, Vol. VI.) 5. W. Havemann, Geschichte der Lande Braunschweig und Lüneburg. 3 vols. Göttingen, 1857. 6. A. Köcher, Geschichte von Hannover und Braunschweig, 1648 bis 1714. I. Theil (1648-1668). (Publicationen aus den k. Preuss. Staatsarchiven XX. Band.) Leipzig, 1884. 7. L. Häusser, Geschichte der rheinischen Pfalz. 2 ed. 2 vols. Heidelberg, 1856. 8. Die Herzogin von Ahiden, Stammutter der Königlichen Häuser Hannover und Preussen. Leip zig, 1852. 9. A. F. H. Schaumann, Sophia Dorothea, Prinzessin von Ahlden, und Kurfürstin Sophie von Hannover. Hanover, 1879. 10. A. Köcher, Die Prinzessin von Ahlden, in Sybel's Historische Zeitschrift. Vol. XLVIII. 1882. perhaps, endowed with what an Elizabethan would have called a "high-aspiring mind;" but in no part or phase of her life was she unequal either to her present fortunes or to the responsibilities which a greater future cast before it. Of the history of the Hanoverian succession her biography will therefore always form a most significant part. But on that history we do not on this occasion propose to dwell. She was in herself a person of no common order. In an age when the majority of the German courts took pride in imitating the splendors and the vices of Versailles, and when the thoughts of her own husband and eldest son were devoted to a narrow dynastic policy, or diverted by the fêtes in which their mistresses shone conspicuous, she led a life many sided, highminded, and pure. The scandal which aspersed her own reputation may be waved aside as utterly without proof. For the coarseness of tone which frequently disfigures her writing, the manners of her age, and, to some extent, experiences unprovoked by herself, are largely accountable. Political ambition was not unknown to her, but it certainly did not absorb her interests. Though she cannot be allowed the credit claimed for her by one of her encomiasts, of having discovered the merits of Leibnitz, and though much of his philosophy was as far above her as she was above the mere pretence of understanding it, she was a woman of shrewd intelligence, unfailing common sense, and a freshness of humor which often de. serves to be mistaken for wit. Perhaps Descartes would hardly have dedicated his "Principia" to her as he did to her sister Elizabeth; but she knew how to which her life extended, her autobiogra. phy serves as the most appropriate guide. With its help there is, we think, little difficulty in understanding her conduct in relation to a series of events, which ended in a terrible catastrophe still the subject of much eager speculation. distinguish precious metal from tinsel, and she saw through Toland, whose glory it was to see through everything. She conciliated without apparent effort the good-will of all whom she cared to please, whether it were an old opponent of her house, like Duke Antony Ulric of Wolfenbüttel; or an unmanageable ci-devant These autobiographical memoirs, which lover, like Duke George William of Celle. were discovered by the late G. H. Pertz King William III. treated her with a re- among the papers in the Hanoverian ar spect not wholly due to her political im- chives, had already been made some use portance; and his great adversary Lewis of both by Havemann, in his valuable XIV., after a visit she had paid to his "History of Brunswick and Lüneburg" court, spoke of her with marked approval, (3 vols., 1857), and by M. Onno Klopp, deigning to add an avowal that he was before they were edited by Dr. Köcher fond of les gens d'esprit. Indeed, the for the series of publications from the learned Urbain Chevreau, in his rather Prussian archives. They do not appear dreary commonplace book, actually opines to have been known to the late Mr. J. M. that the question started by French con- Kemble, when he compiled his instructive ceit, "Si un Allemand peut être bel volume of "State Papers and Corresponesprit," might be settled by the fact that dence;" but Dr. Köcher has of course nobody in France is better entitled to that constantly resorted to them in his own designation than is the duchess of Han-"History of Hanover and Brunswick " over. But, more than this; no one was ever more enthusiastically loved by those who had the best opportunities of learn ing to know the excellence of her heart; nor surest sign of a genial disposition - was she at any time in her life without an intimate friend. The truest of all these friends was her niece, the incomparable Elizabeth Charlotte (Lise-Lotte), Duchess of Orleans. For many a long and weary year this faithful woman, who never wrote an untrue word in her beloved native tongue, poured her griefs and her gossip into the sympathetic ears of ma tante; and when the end came, she mourned her in words of passionate grief. But before attempting to summarize the intellectual and moral traits which distinguish the electress Sophia, it would be necessary to survey her life as a whole, and, above all, to dwell upon its later years, in which the figure of the wonderful old lady, ceaselessly pacing the gravel walks in the gardens of Herrenhausen, was a familiar image to many English from the Peace of Westphalia, a solid and valuable work, of which the first volume has been quite recently published. There can be no doubt as to the genuineness of these memoirs; for though the original or first draft is wanting, the extant copy is from the hand of Leibnitz. Some polite remarks on a sheet of paper, appended by him to the MS., reveal the fact that he has corrected the duchess's French orthogra. phy and grammar. But no such emendations could impair the effect of the writer's style. Leibnitz declares that, in spite of an apparent negligence, it exhibits something of the quality which Longinus calls the sublime; but he elsewhere more nearly hits the mark, when he tells Mme. de Brinon that the duchess alone possessed the art of saying strong things in a marvellously pleasant way. These memoirs in truth contain "strong things" of divers kinds; but the reader will agree with Leibnitz so far as to acknowledge the good-humor which takes the sting out of most of their censures, and relieves, though it cannot refine, the coarse salt of their seventeenth-century pleasantries. And yet the book was written in no buoyant mood. In the months immediately preceding the close of 1680, when Sophia began to write (the "Memoirs" were fin ished on February 25th, 1681), she had lost her sister Elizabeth and her dearly loved brother the Elector Palatine. Dr. Köcher has printed several of her letters to him, which had probably been returned to her immediately after his death, for reminiscences of them occur in the "Memoirs." Her husband, in accordance with a custom of his, was abroad in Italy, and she took up her pen, to divert herself, as she says, during his absence, to avoid melancholy, and to keep herself in good spirits. "For," she adds, with her customary frankness, "I am persuaded that this preserves health and life, which is very dear to me." And it must be al lowed that, though troubles are not to be bought off either by activity of mind or by serenity of temper, few lives so full of public and private cares have been more prolonged or better managed than hers. Sophia, as is well known, was the twelfth of the thirteen children of Elizabeth, daughter of King James I., and Frederick, Elector Palatine and for a short year king of Bohemia. She was born at the Hague on October 14th, 1630, and was thus only by a few months the junior of her first cousin Charles, afterwards King Charles II. Her parents were at the time of her birth living as exiles at the Hague, or at Rhenen, near Utrecht, dependent on the bounty of the States General, eked out by occasional supplies from England. There, however, her uncle's troubles with his Parliament had already begun. Just a month after Sophia's birth a peace was concluded between England and Spain, in which no mention occurred of the Pala tine house, and Frederick was advised by Charles I. to make his own peace with the emperor at any price. Though in this year, 1630, Gustavus Adolphus had already undertaken his first campaign in Germany, its results had failed to excite any strong hopes. All other resources seemed at an end, and private misfortunes, too, were crowding upon the unlucky pair. In 1629, their eldest son, Prince Henry Frederick, had been drowned in a collision off Haarlem; and their infant daughter Charlotte was laid beside him in the grave only three days before the christening of her new-born sister. We may therefore credit Sophia's statement, that her birth gave no extraordinary satisfaction to her father and mother, who were at a loss both where to find godparents for her and what name to bestow upon her in baptism. However, the States of West Frisia generously helped to meet one of these emergencies; and as to her name, which had so nearly marked the beginning of a new English dynasty, she tells us it was drawn by lot out of several which had been written on slips of paper for the purpose. Very soon, she continues, she was packed off by her mother to Leyden, "where her Majesty had all her children brought up at a distance from herself; for the sight of her monkeys and dogs was more agreeable to her than the sight of us." Things were managed more rigorously here than at Rhenen and the Hague. "We had a court quite in the German style. My governess . . . had held the same position with the king my father when he was a child, from which her prob It may be convenient to give the names of these children, with the dates of their births and deaths, in a tabular form:FREDERICK V. (1596-1632) m. Elizabeth (1596-1662). "not so able age may be guessed. But she was | tunes of her house, that she found a conassisted in her duties by her two daugh- genial retreat in the Protestant convent of ters, who seemed older than herself. . . . Herford in Westphalia, of which she beThey taught me to love God and to fear came abbess in 1667, through the efforts the devil, and I was brought up with great of her cousin the great elector. Here devoutness, according to the admirable she was visited by William Penn, whose precepts of Calvin. I was taught the tribute to her saintly memory forms her Heidelberg Catechism in German, which noblest epitaph. Sophia draws a striking I knew by heart without understanding portrait of her sister Elizabeth in the early it." She adds an amusing description of days at Rhenen, from which it would seem her life at Leyden, divided between strict that the elder sister bore a more striking religious exercises and studies, and a still resemblance than herself to their mother, stricter etiquette. During Sophia's child- but the sketch is not particularly respecthood, a deeper gloom than ever surrounded ful. A year or two later, when the sisters the destinies of her family; for the death again met at Heidelberg, the lively Sophia of Gustavus Adolphus in 1632 had been confesses with some shame to her sense followed by that of the dethroned king of of oppression in the company of so supeBohemia; and as the storms were gather- rior a person. Things had altered with ing fast in England, his queen became both women when, shortly before Elizaentirely dependent upon the generosity of beth's death (in 1680), she sent for Sophia her Dutch hosts. In 1639-1640, her eld- to pay her a last visit, and received her, as est surviving son, Charles Lewis, was a is related in the "Memoirs," like a healing prisoner in France, and in 1641 his brother angel from heaven. The second of the Rupert was only liberated from his captiv-queen of Bohemia's daughters, Louisa ity in Austria on promising never to serve Hollandina (born 1622, died 1709) was a against the emperor. Prince Rupert re- person of a different stamp, paired to England, where his sword and handsome," writes Sophia, "but to my that of his brother Maurice were soon un- mind her temper made her more agreesheathed on behalf of their uncle's throne. able." Her life, too, ended in a convent, In Germany, the last and dreariest period but one in which, as may be surmised, she of the Thirty Years' War opened; and maintained a less strict régime than that then, after long crying of peace where which Elizabeth introduced at Herford. there was no peace, the Treaties of West- After suddenly quitting her mother's court phalia at last restored the Lower Palatin- in 1657, she abjured Protestantism at Antate to Charles Lewis, thus rewarding his werp and took refuge in a nunnery at mother's sacrifices, and his own supple Paris. It was probably through the recpersistency. ommendation of her brother Edward, who In 1641 Sophia, herself ill and afflicted had himself become a Roman Catholic and beyond measure by the death from a was married to a divorced French lady of fearful malady of her brother and compan-high rank, that she became abbess of ion Prince Gustavus, left Leyden for the Hague. Here the young girl fancied that she was "enjoying the pleasures of Paradise in beholding so much variety and so many people, and in no longer beholding her teachers." She was by no means hurt at finding there three sisters much handsomer and more accomplished than herself. Of these three the eldest was Eliza beth, who will always be remembered among the learned and pious women, the schöne Seelen, of Protestantism. She had seen more of suffering and sorrow than her younger sisters, and was of a deeper nature than even Sophia, who most resem bled her in her love of learning and reverence for greatness. Yet it is difficult not to regret that one who in her youth had sat at the feet of Descartes should have ended as a devotee of the turbid mysticism of Labadie. It was not till many years after the partial restoration of the for Maubuisson, where she led an extremely comfortable life, boasting of her large family and enjoying incomparable spirits, till she died only a few years before her sister the electress. Louisa Hollandina had some talent as an artist, but, says her sister, "while painting others, she a good deal neglected herself." Sophia, however, gratefully acknowledges that she owed much in these early days to the guidance of her two eldest sisters. The third was Henrietta Maria (born 1626, died 1651), who lived only a short time after her marriage to Sigismund Ragoczi, prince of Transylvania. Sophia gives a very pleasing account of her beauty, but says that her tastes were more domestic than those of her elder sisters, and lay entirely in the direction of needlework and preserving. compared in the admirable Honthorsts now in the The personal attractions of the two sisters may be Welfenmuseum at Herrenhausen. |