ges of the Diary:--

"Argument with the Princess about her toilette. She piques herself on
dressing quick; I disapprove this. She maintains her point; I,
however, desire Madame Busche to explain to her that the Prince is
very delicate, and that he expects a long and very careful _toilette
de properte_, of which she has no idea; on the contrary, she neglects
it sadly, and is _offensive_ from this neglect. Madame Busche
executes her commission well, and the Princess comes out the next day
_well washed all over_."

"Princess Caroline had a tooth drawn--she sends it down to me by a
page--nasty and indelicate."

"I had two conversations with the Princess Caroline; one on the
toilette, on cleanliness, and on delicacy of speaking. On these
points I endeavoured, as far as was possible for a _man_, to
inculcate the necessity of great and nice attention to every part of
dress, as well as to what was hid as to what was seen. (I knew she
wore coarse petticoats, coarse shifts, and thread stockings, and
these never well washed, or changed often enough.) I observed that a
long toilette was necessary, and gave her no credit for boasting that
hers was a _short_ one. What I could not say myself on this point, I
got said through women; through Madame Busche, and afterwards through
Mrs Harcourt. It is remarkable how amazingly on this point her
education has been neglected, and how much her mother, though an
Englishwoman, was inattentive to it."

Such were the personal habits of the future Queen of England, who, in this
normal virtue, fell infinitely beneath the level of a daughter of a
British tradesman. It is plain that Lord Malmesbury has left much unsaid;
but enough there is to show that, in every way, she was unfitted to be the
wife of the most fastidious prince in Europe. In point of morals, the
examples afforded her at the court of Brunswick were of the worst possible
description. Conjugal fidelity seems to have been a virtue totally unknown
to the German sovereigns. The following, according to Lord Malmesbury,
were the existing _liaisons_ of Frederick William of Prussia. "The female
in actual possession of favour is of no higher degree than a servant-maid.
She is known by the name of Mickie, or Mary Doz, and her principal merit
is youth and a warm constitution. She has acquired a certain degree of
ascendancy, and is