ed the bird, it is said, and lavished all fondness
and tenderness upon it. What {267} became of it in the end history
does not allow us to know. Whether it still is sitting, like the more
famous raven of poetry, it is not for us to guess. Probably when the
Duchess herself expired in 1743, the ghastly, grim, and ancient raven
disappeared with her. Why George the First, if he had the power of
returning in any shape to see his mistress, did not come in his own
proper form, it is not for us to explain. One might be disposed to
imagine that in such a case it would be the first step which would
involve the cost, and that there would be no greater difficulty for the
departed soul to come back in the likeness of its old vestment of clay
than to put on the unfamiliar and somewhat inconvenient form of a fowl.
Perhaps the story is not true. Possibly there was no raven or other
bird in the case at all. It may be that, if a black raven did fly in
at the Duchess of Kendal's window, the bird was not the embodied spirit
of King George. For ourselves, we should be sorry to lose the story.
Neither the King nor the mistress could afford to part with any slight
clement of romance wherewithal even legend has chosen to invest them.
Another story, which probably has more truth in it, adds a new
ghastliness to the circumstances of George's death. On November 13,
1726, some seven months before that event, there died in a German
castle a woman whom the gazette of the capital described as the
Electress Dowager of Hanover. This was the unfortunate Princess
Sophia, the wife of George. Thirty-two years of melancholy captivity
she had endured, while George was drinking and hoarding money and
amusing himself with his seraglio of ugly women. She died protesting
her innocence to the last. In the closing days of her illness, so runs
the story, she gave into the hands of some one whom she could trust, a
letter addressed to her husband, and obtained a promise that the letter
should, somehow or other, be delivered to George himself. This letter
contained a final declaration that she was absolutely guiltless of the
offence alleged against her, a bitter reproach to George for his
ruthless conduct, {268} and a solemn summons to him to stand by her
side before the judgment-seat of Heaven within a year, and there make
answer in her presence for the wrongs he had done her, for her blighted
life and her miserable death. There was no way of getting thi