and occasionally excoriated her face by rubbing it with acrid substances. Such, however, was the magnanimity of her royal pupil, that she never made the least complaint of this dreadful usage; but an old lady found it out, and told the queen, that "her daughter was beaten every day like plaster," and that she would be brought to her one morning with her bones broken, if she did not get another attendant. So La Letti is dismissed, though with infinite difficulty, and after a world of intrigue; because she had been recommended by my lady Arlington, who had a great deal to say with all the court of England, with which it was a main object to keep well! But she is got rid of at last, and decamps with all the princess's wardrobe, who is left without a rag to cover her nakedness. Soon after this, the king is taken with a colic one very hot June, and is judiciously shut up in a close room, with a large, comfortable fire; by the side of which he commands his daughter to sit, and watch like a vestal, till her eyes are ready to start from her head; and she falls into a dysentery, of which she gives a long history.

Being now at the ripe age of twelve, her mother takes her into her confidence, and begins with telling her that there are certain people who are her enemies, to whom she commands her never to show any kindness or civility. She then proceeds to name three-fourths of all Berlin." But her great object is to train her daughter to be a spy on her father, and at the same time to keep every thing secret from him and his counsellors; and to arrange measures for a match between her and her nephew the Duke of Gloucester-afterwards Prince of Wales, on the accession of his father George II. In 1723, George I. comes to visit his daughter at Berlin, and is characterized, we cannot say very favourably, by his grandchild. He was very stupid, she says, with great airs of wisdomhad no generosity but for his favourites, and the mistresses by whom he let himself be governed-spoke little, and took no pleasure in hearing any thing but niaiseries: since his accession to the English throne he had also become insupportably haughty and imperious. When the fair author was presented to him, he took up a candle, held it close to her, and examined her all over without saying a word: at table he preserved the same magnificent silence; judging wisely, the princess observes, that it was better to say nothing than to expose himself by talking. Before the end of the repast he was taken ill; and tumbled down on the floor, his hat falling off on one side and his wig on the other. It was a full hour before he came to him. self; and it was whispered that it was a sort of apoplexy : however, he was well enough next day, and arranged every

thing for the marriage of the author with his grandson, and of her brother with the Princess Amelia. Obstacles arose, however, to the consummation of this double alliance; and although the two sovereigns had another meeting on the subject the year after, still the necessity of obtaining the consent of parliament occasioned an obstruction; and in the mean time Frederic having thought fit to seize several tall Hanoverians, and enrol them by force in his regiment of giants, the English monarch resented this outrage, and died of another attack of apoplexy before matters could be restored to a right footing.

Soon after this catastrophe, Frederic takes to drinking with the imperial ambassador; and, when his stomach gets into disorder, becomes outrageously pious; orders his valet to sing psalms before him, and preaches himself to his family every afternoon. The princess and her brother are ready to suffocate with laughter at these discourses; but the hypochondria gains ground; and at last the king talks seriously of resigning his crown, and retiring with his family to a small house in the country; where his daughter should take care of the linen, his son of the provisions, and his wife of the kitchen. To divert these melancholy thoughts, he is persuaded to pay a visit to the Elector of Saxony, Augustus, King of Poland; and there, large potations of Hungarian wine speedily dissipate all his dreams of devotion. Nothing in modern history, we suppose, comes near the profligacy of the court of Dresden at that period. Augustus, who never closed a day in sobriety, openly kept a large seraglio in his palace, and had about 350 children by its inhabitants. One of those who had all along been recognised as his daughter, was at this time his favourite mistress; while she, disdaini / he faithful to this incestuous connexion, lavished all her favour cn her brother, who was her avowed lover, and the rival of their common parent! Frederic, however, was so much pleased with these doings, that he entered into a treaty for marrying his daughter to this virtuous elector, who was then fifty years of age; and the year after, Augustus came to Berlin, to follow out his suit, where he was received in great state, and the daughter-mistress caressed by the chaste queen and her daughter. There is a good description of a grand court dinner given on this occasion, in which, after a long account of the marshalling of princes and princesses, the business of the day is summed up in the following emphatic words-On but force santés-on parla peu-et on s'ennuya beaucoup. The two kings, however, had various tête-à-tête parties that were more jolly; and in which they continued at table from one o'clock, which was their hour of dinner, till near midnight. In spite of all this VOL. I. New Series. Од

cordiality, however, the treaty of marriage was broken off : the heir apparent of Augustus having obstinately refused to ratify those articles in it which required his concurrence.

The king now resolved to match his daughter with a poor German prince, called the Duke of Weissenfield; at which his wife, who had been all this time intriguing busily to bring about the union originally projected with the Prince of Wales, is in despair, and persuades him to let her make one effort more to bring her brother of England to a determination. And here we have a very curious piece of secret history, which, though it touches the policy of the court of England, has hitherto been unknown, we believe, in this country. A confidential agent arrives from Hanover, who informs the queen that the Prince of Wales has made up his mind to come immediately to Berlin, and to marry her daughter, without waiting for the formal consent of his father, or the English parliament, who, however, he has no doubt, will neither of them hesitate to ratify the act when it is once over. The queen is transported with this news, and is so much intoxicated with joy on the occasion, that she bethinks herself of confiding the whole story in the evening to the English ambassador-who instantly writes home to his court; and his letter being addressed to the secretary of state, produces an immediate mandate to the prince to set off for England without the delay of a moment. This mandate arrives just as his royal highness is taking post with bridal impatience for Berlin: and, as it is addressed to him through the public offices, requires his implicit obedience. The truth of the matter is, the princess assures us, that George II. was himself desirous that the match should be concluded without waiting for the uncertain sanction of his parliament, and had suggested this device of a seeming etourderie on the part of his son; but the indiscretion of her mother, in blabbing the matter to the ambassador, and his communication to the ministry, left the monarch no choice, but to dissemble his mortification, and lend his authority to prevent the execution of a project which had originated with himself.

But, whatever may be the true theory of this disaster, it seems to be certain, that the disappointment put the King of Prussia into exceeding bad humour, and, concurring with an untimely fit of the gout, made the lives of his family still more uncomfortable than he took care at all times to render them. The account, indeed, which is here given of the domestic habits of this worthy sovereign, though humiliating in some degree to human nature, has yet something in it so extravagant, as to be actually ludicrous and farcical. He ordered

his children to come to his apartment at nine o'clock every morning, and kept them close prisoners there the whole day, not letting them once out of his sight, “pour quelque raison que ce fut." His employment was to curse and abuse them with every coarse term of reproach-his daughter getting no other name than la Canaille Anglaise, and his son, le Coquin de Fritz. He had always been in the practice of famishing them, partly out of avarice, and partly from the love of tormenting; but now even the soup made of bare bones and salt was retrenched. He often refused to let them have any thing whatsoever; and spit into the dishes out of which he had helped himself, in order to prevent their touching them. At other times he would insist upon their eating all sorts of unwholesome and disgusting compositions-" ce qui nous obligeait quelquefois de rendre, en sa presence, tout ce que nous avions dans le corps." Even this, however, was not the worst of it. He very frequently threw the plates at their heads, and scarcely ever let his daughter go out of the room, without aiming a sly blow at her with the end of his crutch. The unhappy Frederic he employed himself almost every morning in caning and kicking for a long time together; and, was actually busy, upon one occasion, in strangling him with the cord of a window curtain, when he was interrupted by one of his domestics. To make amends, however, he once hung up himself; when the queen, by a rare act of folly, was induced to cut him down. When free from gout he was still more dangerous; for then he could pursue his daughters with considerable agility when they ran away from his blows; and once caught the author, after a chase of this kind, when he clutched her by the hair, and pushed her into the fire-place, till her clothes began to burn. During the heat of summer, he carried his family to a country house called Vousterhausen, which was an old ruinous mansion, surrounded with a putrid ditch; and there they dined every day, in a tent pitched on the terrace, with scarcely any thing to eat, and their feet up to the ancles in mud, if the weather happened to be rainy. After dinner, which was served exactly at noon, the good king set himself down to sleep for two hours, in a great chair placed in the full glare of the sun, and compelled all his family to lie on the ground around him, exposed to the same intolerable scorching.

After some little time, England sends another ambassador, who renews, in due form, the proposal of the double marriage, and offers such baits to the avarice of the king that matters appear once more to be finally adjusted, and the princess is saluted by her household with the title of Princess of Wales.

This, however, was not her destiny. Grumkow intrigues with the imperial ambassador to break off the match-and between them they contrive to persuade the king that he is made a tool of by the queen and her brother of England: and inflame him to such a rage by producing specimens of their secret correspondence, that when the English ambassador appears next day with decisive proofs of Grumkow's treachery and insolence, the king throws the papers in his face, and actually lifts his foot, as if to give him the family salute of a kick. The blood of the Englishman rouses at this insult; and he puts himself in a posture to return the compliment with interest-when the king makes a rapid retreat-and the ambassador, in spite of the entreaties of the queen and her children, and various overtures of apology from the king himself, shakes the dust of Berlin from his feet, and sets off in high dudgeon for London. The king then swears that his daughter shall have no husband at all, but that he will make her abbess in the monastery of Herford; and her brother Frederic, to her great mortification, tells her it is the best thing she can do, and that he sees no other way to restore peace in the family.

We now proceed to the adventures of this brother, which, as their outline is already generally known, need not be fully narrated in this place. Tired of being beaten, and kicked, and reviled all day long, he resolves to withdraw from his country, and makes some movements to that effect in confederacy with an officer of the name of Katt, who was to have been the companion of his flight. Both, however, are arrested by the king's order, who makes several attempts upon the life of his son, when he is brought as a prisoner before himand comes home foaming and black with passion, crying out to the queen that her accursed son was dead at last; and felling his daughter to the earth with his fist, as he tells her to go and bear her brother company. He then gets hold of a box of his son's papers, which had been surprised at Katt's lodgings, and goes out with it in great spirits, exclaiming, that he was sure he should find in it enough to justify him in cutting off the heads both of le Coquin de Fritz, and la Canaille de Wilhelmine. Wilhelmine, however, and her politic mother had been beforehand with him-for they had got hold of this same box the day preceding, and by false keys and seals had taken all the papers out of it, and replaced them by harmless and insignificant letters, which they had fabricated in the course of one day, to the amount of near seven hundred. The king, therefore, found nothing to justify immediate execution, but kept the prince a close prisoner at Custrin, and shut the princess up in her own chamber. His son and Katt were after