1853.] Sketches of the House of Brunswick. was all; Mr. Peter Merton thought, as the day closed, that with all her little faults, some of which he saw with singular penetration, she was a very agreeable, well disposed sort of woman. We must again pass onward some years in our story; four have elapsed since the events last related; each year Mrs. Howard has paid a longer visit than the last to Hursleigh, and yet, strange to say, much as the above fact may militate against the assertion, she has not grown upon the affections of Peter Merton. Deception never answers in the long run; it may succeed on any one particular occasion, as at the time did the suppression of Captain Merton's letter; but the daily, hourly, little falsehoods and concealments of a woman like Mrs. Howard must destroy every feeling of regard and respect in an honest, truthful mind like that of uncle Peter. She erred, too, in protracting her visits to such a length as she did; she was more fitted to stay a week than a month in a house; for one week you might have been charmed with her, in a month you were disgusted. Why, then, did Mr. Merton invite her? Because he was a lonely man, and needed, he felt, as he grew older, kindness of some sort to make life supportable. He saw the worth of hers, but he thought bought kindness better than none at all; and the vast echoing rooms of the old mansion, untenanted the whole year through, had become dreary and distressing to him in the extreme. Mrs. Howard has been now nearly three months at Hursleigh, and shows symptoms of an intention of 445 taking up her quarters there altogether. Mr. Merton has become intensely weary this year of her society, and is vainly seeking for a pretext for getting rid of his visitor, who, on her part, is occupied in seeking for one to remain in her present quarters. It is somewhat odd that they should each choose the same pretext for such various designs. The health of Mr. Peter Merton had been visibly declining; he looked much older than he really was, for in truth he could scarcely yet in years be called an old man; he was nervous and irritable; he had neither sleep nor appetite; indeed he was becoming anything but an agreeable host for visitors less pertinacious than Mrs. Howard and her daughters. How could they leave him'the dear old man'-in such a state? It was impossible. They had many engagements for the summer, but all must give way to the paramount duty of remaining at Hursleigh. This Mrs. Howard was continually saying or implying. Uncle Peter, on his part, was the last man to turn people violently out of his house who were bent on staying in it. At last he hit upon an expedient. He was really growing unwell-worse and worse; he was wearied, not only of Mrs. Howard and the Misses Howard, but of Hursleigh-of life altogether. There was something decidedly wrong somewhere. Mrs. Howard begged him to see Mr. Evans, the medical man of the neighbourhood, but he had no confidence in Mr. Evans, and would not see him. He determined at last to go to town, and consult Dr. A—, whose advice he had found of great use in an earlier period of his life. SKETCHES OF THE COURTS OF THE HOUSE OF BRUNSWICK IN GERMANY AND ENGLAND.* IN our July number we gave some account of the history of the Court and Aristocracy of Prussia, by Dr. Vehse; we propose now to extract from this, the latest work of the German professor, such passages from the history of the House of Brunswick as may have most of the interest of novelty for English readers. The pen of the learned Gibbon was employed upon the antiquities of the noble House of Brunswick, of which the Royal family of Eng * Geschichte der Höfe des Hauses Braunschweig in Deutschland und England, By Dr. Edward Vehse. 4 vols. Hamburg, 1853. land are a younger branch. During the middle ages, the Guelphs fought a good fight against the Ghibelline party, which was, however, the successful one, and for a long time the Guelphs had to feel the oppression of their foes. But their star was once more in the ascendant during the reign of Ernest Augustus, the first Elector of Hanover, whose marriage with Sophia Stuart, the daughter of Frederick, the unfortunate King of Bohemia, and of Elizabeth Stuart, opened to the small House of Hanover the succession to the English throne. Sophia Stuart's youth was passed in the stormy times of the thirty years' war. She was born in Holland in 1630, the year when Gustavus Adolphus entered Germany, and was educated in England. She was one of the few among Princes who turned the misfortunes and miseries of her youth to good account. Her greatest friend in afterlife was Leibnitz, who never called her by any other name than our great Electress.' Her shining qualities completely cast her husband into the shade. The Great Electress, however, never lived to enjoy the honour she so much coveted, of having engraved on her tombstone, 'Sophia, Queen of England.' She died on the 8th June, 1714, but two short months before the death of Queen Anne opened the succession to her. She was struck by apoplexy in her garden at Herrenhausen, in her eighty-sixth year. It was an unusually fine evening, and she had, as was her custom, been walking with her son George, the Elector, in full health; a shower came on, and after running in, she sank on the ground, and in a few minutes was dead. We will not follow Dr. Vehse in his account of the intrigues and counter-intrigues of the two rival factions into which England was split at the time when George I. ascended the throne, more especially as his authorities are all accessible to the English reader. Dr. Vehse has laid Walpole's Memoirs and Letters, Wraxall's Memoirs, the Lexington Correspondence, and various other subsequent English works, good, bad, and indifferent, under heavy contribution, and has produced an amusing, gossiping book out of these materials. His estimate of the German House of Hanover is not high, but his picture of the English is flattering enough to our national vanity: much of the interest of the book is derived from seeing ourselves 80 favourably portrayed through German spectacles. The precautions taken by the Earl of Shrewsbury and his party in the Government, prevented the slightest disturbances when Queen Anne died, on the 12th August, 1714, and the Elector of Hanover was proclaimed King of Great Britain and Ireland. Lord Clarendon, the English Minister at the Court of Hanover, was the first to convey this piece of news to George I. It was an important, but by no means a pleasant announcement, says Dr. Vehse, the intelligence that the people of England expected him as their king. We possess testimony to this effect in a confidential letter written by Marshal Schulenburg to Baron Steinghens, the envoy of the Palatinate in London, in which, under the date of the 10th Au gust, 1714, only two days before the death of Queen Anne, he says,—' It is quite evident that George is profoundly indifferent as to the upshot of this ques tion of succession; nay, I would even bet that when it really comes to the point he will be in despair at having to give up his place of residence, where he amuses himself with trifles, in order to assume a post of honour and dignity. He is endowed with all the qualities requisite to make a finished nobleman, but he lacks all those that make a king.' George's instinct taught him that he would play a sorry part in England. He-a petty German prince-among a nation of princes, the great Lords and the rich gentry. He came from a country where the prince was almost absolute, and would go into a land where the people treated him almost on the footing of equality; where the whole of the best society, which had the entré at court, consisted of people who united the courtier with the republican, the noble with the roturier. He was not so far wrong in looking forward to his entry into such a country with some anxiety. People of quality were not to his taste, ceremony was not to his liking. However, spite of his unwillingness, go he must. He put off his departure for a whole month. On the 11th September he left Herrenhausen, accompanied by his son, and Caroline of Anspach, his daughter in-law. Their children followed in October. George I. (says Dr. Vehse) appeared to the English to be a type of the Stuarts, after the German fashion. He was obstinate and tyrannical, but he had no spark of that romantic spirit which cost Mary Stuart and Charles I. their heads, and James II. his throne. George I. was passionate, but after his own peculiar manner; he was even cruel and hateful but he was all this, as it seemed to the English, after a middleclass vulgar fashion, without any trace of that elegance or grace which the nobility and gentry of England possessed, and expected to find in those who were called to reign over them. But George was a Protestant, and old England was determined to remain Protestant, at any price. It therefore put up with him. Not less than fifty-four members of reigning houses in Europe, who all had a better title to it than George I., were excluded from the English throne. Sophia Stuart, George's mother, the daughter of the beautiful Elizabeth of Bohemia, the only sister of the beheaded Charles, came, according to actual law, after all these, but she was the only one who happened to be a Protestant. George was deficient in intellectual qualities, in tact and dignity, in short, in all the attributes which should adorn a king, or even a subject; but he had the one qualification needed, he was opposed to catholicism, and an enemy to France and Louis XIV. So he was selected before scores of others, who had a better right to the throne than he. George appeared in England with a seraglio of hideous old women, some of whom came with him, and others joined him afterwards. There was the Countess Kielmansegge, nick-named the Elephant,' and the May-pole,' Schulenburg, who had her two nieces, as they were called, with her. The King of England shut himself up with them every evening. The London mob surrounded the coaches of these German women, and hissed them, partly for their total want of beauty, partly because it was soon discovered that they sold their influence with the King for money. A host of broadsides and caricatures issued from the press. The first Elector, Ernest Augustus, had introduced into Hanover the French custom of royal mistresses. He, his son George I., and his grandson, took their favourites from one and the same family. For nearly one hundred years, the family of Platen supplied this article of royal luxury. First, there was 447 the wicked Countess Platen,' to whom we shall presently have occasion to return; her daughter, the Countess Kielmansegge, who subsequently was created Countess of Darlington; her step-daughter, the younger Countess Platen; Frau von der Bussche, a sister of the wicked Countess Platen; and a fifth lady, Countess Walmoden, afterwards created Countess of Yarmouth, who was grand-niece of the same 'wicked Platen.' In 1682, George I., then Crown Prince of Hanover, had married his cousin, Sophia Dorothea, the daughter of George, Duke of Zell, of whose memoirs an English version appeared in 1845. This publication was chiefly founded upon a biography of Sophia Dorothea, entitled A short Account of my Fate and Prison, by the Princess Dora of Aquilon, published in Hamburg, in 1840; and the original of this again was written in French, and called Precis de mon Destin et de ma Prison. The memoirs published in London, contain this autobiography, and an account, written by the Princess's intimate friend and faithful servant, Fraulein von Knesebeck, to the Crown Princess of Prussia, the daughter of Sophia Dorothea. The second volume contains the Diary of Conversations.' The biography commences with the first appearance of Count Königsmark in Hanover, in the year 1685, and ends with the last days of Sophia Dorothea's imprisonment in the fortress of Ahlden, in 1726. From this place she took the name of Princess of Ahlden. This work treats the Princess as a martyr, but these illusions, says Dr. Vehse, have been dispelled by some letters between the Princess and her lover, Königsmark, published by Professor Palmblad, in Upsala, in 1847, which leave scarcely any doubt as to the intimate connexion subsisting between them. The Princess of Ahlden obviously meant to add the sanction of marriage to her connexion with Königsmark, if she could have escaped from her husband; but the catastrophe took place shortly before the preparations for flight were finally arranged. Sophia Dorothea, the Crown Princess of Hanover, born in the year 1666, the daughter of George William Duke of Zell, and his French wife Eleonora d'Olbreuse, was married at sixteen, in 1682, to her cousin George of Hanover. The French blood that flowed in her veins, and the education she received at the gay court of Zell, had their effect. Her mother,' says her cousin, the Duchess of Orleans, brought her up to coquetry and gallantry.' She was clever, exciteable, and full of imagination. She was of the middle size, and of exquisite form, with fair brown hair, her face oval, and her complexion good. This lively young girl was ill suited to her silent, dull, husband; and their married life was not happy. George was often absent in the wars, and his return did not improve matters. She loved pleasure, he nothing but hunting and his favourites-Frau von der Bussche, Melusina Schulenburg, afterwards Duchess of Kendal, and Countess Kielmansegge. Sophia Dorothea soon bestowed her affections upon Count Philip of Königsmark, the handsome brother of Aurora, the famous mistress of Augustus the Strong, King of Poland, and the mother of Marshal Saxe. Philip, Count Königsmark was descended from an old Brandenburg family. Some of the race had settled in Sweden. Philip's grandfather, Hans Christopher, had made himself a name during the thirty years' war, as a partisan-leader under Gustavus Adolphus, and Wrangel. After the peace of Westphalia, he became Governor of Bremen and Verden, which were garrisoned by Swedish troops. left his children an immense fortune, won by his right hand. At the He taking of Prague he acquired great booty. This Count Hans Christopher, like all his race, was herculean in form, and of a wild, savage temper: when inflamed with passion, his face assumed the most hideous aspect, his hair stood on end like the bristles of a wild boar, and he inspired terror among his enemies. His grandson, Philip of Königsmark, was born in 1662, and inherited his mother's beauty. She was a daughter of the Swedish house of Wrangel, famous for their beauty. Philip was brought up at the Court of Zell, and passed much of his youth with Sophia Dorothea, for whom he entertained a youthful passion. Depuis que je vous ai vue, he writes to her during one of his campaigns on the Rhine, mon cœur s'est senti touché sans oser le dire, et quoique l'enfance, où j'étais, m'empechait de vous déclarer ma passion, je ne vous ai pas moins aimé. From Zell young Königsmark was sent to finish his education in England, at the corrupt Court of Charles II. In this country, he was involved with his elder brother Charles John, in a scandalous matter -the murder of Thomas Thynne, Tom of ten thousand,' as he was called, who had married the heiress of the Percy family, whom Königsmark wanted for himself. This murder was committed on the 12th February, 1682, in the public streets, in Pall Mall, nearly opposite the opera-house colonade, Thynne was shot by three hired murderers, George Borosky, Christopher Vraats, and John Storn, who were subsequently all executed for the murder-the principal, Charles John Count Königsmark, fled, but was taken at Gravesend; Vraats was offered a free pardon if he would peach against the Königsmarks; but Vraats held his peace, and was executed. Charles John Count Königsmark was killed fighting against the Turks in the Morea in 1686; and the subsequent catastrophe of Philip, Count Königsmark was looked upon as a just punishment for the share he had in this transaction, and in the sacrifice of Vraats's life. Philip of Königsmark next took service, in 1685, under the Elector Ernest Augustus of Hanover, and renewed his old acquaintance with the lively Crown Princess, who lived, as we have said, unhappily with her cold and uncongenial hus band. It appears from the correspondence quoted by Dr. Vehse that the lovers met in secret; the Princess even went to Königsmark's lodgings, which, according to tradition, were in the present Hotel de Strelitz,' on the Neumarkt.' In one of his letters Königsmark writes: Demain à dix heures je serai au rendezvous. In another: Mon ange, 1853.] Count Philip of Königsmark. c'est pour toi seule que je vis et que je respire. At an evening party Count Königsmark lost out of his hat a billet doux, written to him by the Princess; great was his consternation: he did not fear for himself-but to lose her for ever! The Princess consoles him by telling him that if he thought that the fear of exposure, or of losing her reputation (these words were written in cipher) prevented her from seeing him, he did her great injustice. She steadfastly hoped some day to marry him, and to withdraw into some remote corner of the world, while Königsmark dreamt of winning her and a position by some chivalrous enterprise. He was jealous when she spoke to any one else-particularly to an Austrian, Count Von Piemont. All this did not escape the lynx eyes of others. The wicked Countess of Platen' (whose advances Count Königsmark had repelled) saw in this the means of wreaking her vengeance on one who had spurned her love, and on a hated rival. The wicked Countess Platen' simulated the warmest interest in the confiding Princess, and pretended to favour the intrigue, while she drew the net tighter round her two victims. Königsmark's indiscretion in boasting, at a dinner table, of his connexion with the Princess, and of his scorn for Countess Platenthe spreta injuria forma — words which were transmitted forthwith to Countess Platen, brought matters to a crisis; the scorned one vowed to ruin Königsmark and the Princess. The Crown Prince was about to proceed to Berlin, and this seemed a good opportunity for the two lovers to carry their long cherished plan for flight into execution; it was proposed by Königsmark to escape by way of Hamburg into France; the Princess preferred seeking shelter at the Court of Duke Antony Ulrich of Brunswick. On the 1st July, 1694, between ten and eleven at night, Königsmark paid his last visit to the Princess in the palace at Hanover. He had disguised himself in a pair of old grey linen trousers, an old white shirt (camisol), and a brown overcoat.' This visit was to talk over the arrangements for their flight, Königsmark's servants and carriages VOL. XLVIII. NO. CCLXXXVI. 449 being all ready for instant departure to Dresden or elsewhere. The interview lasted longer than was prudent; the Princess's faithful attendant, Fraulein von Knesebeck, frequently urged them to bring it to a close. At length Königsmark went away, and the rest of the night was passed by the Princess in packing up such valuables as she meant to take with her. The wicked Countess Platen had received notice from her spies that Königsmark was with the Princess, and had obtained the Elector's authority to have him arrested, under the plea of saving the honour of the princely house. The Crown Princess lived in that part of the palace at Hanover which now forms the state apartments. A corridor leads out of these apartments by the Rittersaal, a large hall which joined the rooms occupied by the Princess to those inhabited by the Crown Prince. Königsmark went along this corridor, humming a tune, till he came to a small door leading down some steps into the garden-a door which was usually left open; but this time he found it locked. He then went along another corridor running along the length of the Rittersaal, and came to an ante-room built over the court chapel, where there was a large chimney built to receive the smoke from the apparatus to heat the chapel. Four halberdiers had been posted in this dark corner. Countess Platen had charged these halberdiers to take Königsmark prisoner, but in the event of his offering any resistance they were to use their weapons. It appears, from the statement afterwards made by one of these halberdiers to a clergyman of the name of Cramer, that Königsmark was not without suspicions of unfair play, as he had unsheathed his sword, and when attacked defended himself bravely, wounding several of his opponents, until, his sword breaking, he was overpowered. He was borne, mortally wounded, into a room close by, where his old enemy, Countess Platen, was; on seeing her, he collected his last remaining strength to pour his execrations upon her, to which she replied by stamping with her feet upon his bleeding face. Königsmark was then taken into a G G |