ost his head, his niece Sophia, one of many children
of another luckless dethroned sovereign, the Elector Palatine, married
Ernest Augustus of Brunswick, and brought the reversion to the crown of
the three kingdoms in her scanty trousseau. One of the handsomest, the
most cheerful, sensible, shrewd, accomplished of women was Sophia,(186)
daughter of poor Frederick, the winter king of Bohemia. The other
daughters of lovely, unhappy Elizabeth Stuart went off into the Catholic
Church; this one, luckily for her family, remained, I cannot say faithful
to the Reformed Religion, but at least she adopted no other. An agent of
the French king's, Gourville, a convert himself, strove to bring her and
her husband to a sense of the truth; and tells us that he one day asked
madame the Duchess of Hanover, of what religion her daughter was, then a
pretty girl of thirteen years old. The duchess replied that the princess
_was of no religion as yet_. They were waiting to know of what religion
her husband would be, Protestant or Catholic, before instructing her! And
the Duke of Hanover having heard all Gourville's proposal, said that a
change would be advantageous to his house, but that he himself was too old
to change.

This shrewd woman had such keen eyes that she knew how to shut them upon
occasion, and was blind to many faults which it appeared that her husband
the Bishop of Osnaburg and Duke of Hanover committed. He loved to take his
pleasure like other sovereigns--was a merry prince, fond of dinner and the
bottle; liked to go to Italy, as his brothers had done before him; and we
read how he jovially sold 6,700 of his Hanoverians to the seigniory of
Venice. They went bravely off to the Morea, under command of Ernest's son,
Prince Max, and only 1,400 of them ever came home again. The German
princes sold a good deal of this kind of stock. You may remember how
George III's Government purchased Hessians, and the use we made of them
during the War of Independence.

The ducats Duke Ernest got for his soldiers he spent in a series of the
most brilliant entertainments. Nevertheless, the jovial prince was
economical, and kept a steady eye upon his own interests. He achieved the
electoral dignity for himself: he married his eldest son George to his
beautiful cousin of Zell; and sending his sons out in command of armies to
fight--now on this side, now on that--he lived on, taking his pleasure, and
scheming his schemes, a merry, wise prince enough