n; and of
Elisabeth Philippine, Countess of Horn, born at Mons in Hainaut, the
20th September 1752, educated there in a convent, and subsequently
admitted to the half-ecclesiastic, half-worldly dignity of Canoness of
Ste. Wandru in that town: Louise, Princess of Stolberg, now in her
twentieth year, had been betrothed, and, a few weeks ago, married by
proxy in Paris to Charles Edward Stuart, known to history as the Younger
Pretender, to popular imagination as Bonnie Prince Charlie, and to
society in the second half of the eighteenth century as the Count of
Albany. The match had been made up hurriedly--most probably without
consulting, or dreaming of consulting, the girl--by her mother, the
dowager Princess Stolberg, and the Duke of Fitz-James, Charles Edward's
cousin. The French Minister, Duc d'Aiguillon, in one of those fits of
preparing Charles Edward as a weapon against England, which had more
than once cost the Pretender so much bitterness, and the Court of
Versailles so much brazenly endured shame, had intimated to the Count of
Albany that he had better take unto himself a wife. Charles Edward had
more than once refused; this time he accepted, and his cousin Fitz-James
looked around for a possible future Queen of England. Now it happened
that the eldest son of Fitz-James, the Marquis of Jamaica and Duke of
Berwick, had just married Caroline, the second daughter of the widow of
Prince Gustavus Adolphus of Stolberg-Gedern; so that the choice
naturally fell upon this lady's elder sister, Louise of Stolberg, the
young Canoness of Ste. Wandru of Mons.

The alliance, short of royal birth, was, in the matter of dignity, all
that could be wished; the Stolbergs were one of the most illustrious
families of the Holy Roman Empire, in whose service they had discharged
many high offices; the Horns, on the other hand, were among the most
brilliant of the Flemish aristocracy, allied to the Gonzagas of Mantua,
the Colonna, Orsinis, the Medina Celis, Croys, Lignes, Hohenzollerns,
and the house of Lorraine, reigning or quasi-reigning families; and
Louise of Stolberg's mother was, moreover, on the maternal side, the
grand-daughter of the Earl of Elgin and Ailesbury, a Bruce, and a
staunch follower of King James II. Such had been the inducements in the
eyes of the Duke of Fitz-James; and therefore in the eyes of Charles
Edward, for whom he was commissioned to select a wife. The inducements
to the Princess of Stolberg had been even great