, not, I fear, a moral
prince, of which kind we shall have but very few specimens in the course
of these lectures.

Ernest Augustus had seven children in all, some of whom were scapegraces,
and rebelled against the parental system of primogeniture and non-division
of property which the Elector ordained. "Gustchen," the Electress writes
about her second son:--"Poor Gus is thrust out, and his father will give
him no more keep. I laugh in the day, and cry all night about it; for I am
a fool with my children." Three of the six died fighting against Turks,
Tartars, Frenchmen. One of them conspired, revolted, fled to Rome, leaving
an agent behind him, whose head was taken off. The daughter, of whose
early education we have made mention, was married to the Elector of
Brandenburg, and so her religion settled finally on the Protestant side.

A niece of the Electress Sophia--who had been made to change her religion,
and marry the Duke of Orleans, brother of the French king; a woman whose
honest heart was always with her friends and dear old Deutschland, though
her fat little body was confined at Paris or Marly, or Versailles--has left
us, in her enormous correspondence (part of which has been printed in
German and French), recollections of the Electress, and of George her son.
Elizabeth Charlotte was at Osnaburg when George was born (1660). She
narrowly escaped a whipping for being in the way on that auspicious day.
She seems not to have liked little George, nor George grown up; and
represents him as odiously hard, cold, and silent. Silent he may have
been: not a jolly prince like his father before him, but a prudent, quiet,
selfish potentate, going his own way, managing his own affairs, and
understanding his own interests remarkably well.

In his father's lifetime, and at the head of the Hanover forces of 8,000
or 10,000 men, George served the Emperor, on the Danube against Turks, at
the siege of Vienna, in Italy, and on the Rhine. When he succeeded to the
Electorate, he handled its affairs with great prudence and dexterity. He
was very much liked by his people of Hanover. He did not show his feelings
much, but he cried heartily on leaving them; as they used for joy when he
came back. He showed an uncommon prudence and coolness of behaviour when
he came into his kingdom; exhibiting no elation; reasonably doubtful
whether he should not be turned out some day; looking upon himself only as
a lodger, and making the most of his brie