army was serving in Westphalia and Hanover; the Elector died away from his home and was succeeded by his son; none of the eastern provinces of Prussia suffered like Hesse. The Elector Frederick had been educated on the Rhine, and shortly before the outbreak of the Seven Years' War was the guest of the Archbishop Elector of Cologne. Political honors have been made the reason of the Elector of Saxony's change of his Protestant faith--that he might secure the throne of Catholic Poland. Vanity and want of patriotic pride have led German princesses to win Russian husbands at the sacrifice of their Protestant faith, while no Russian princess has ever given up her church for the sake of a foreign husband. Frederick of Hesse changed his religion from purely personal reasons and in perfect honesty. It was long concealed from his father, a strong Protestant, ruling the church in the spirit of his ancestor Maurice. An accident revealed the secret, and violent was the anger of the sturdy Protestant father. At first he wanted to exclude his son from the succession, but this required an appeal to the Emperor, who naturally would refuse. The elder prince then, with the approval of his Parliament, made a close alliance with England, and this added to the security of his son's English marriage. The eldest son of that marriage, later on Elector William, was to rule in Hanau, free from any influence of his Catholic father, under the protection of an English garrison, so that his home was temporarily separated from Hesse, and put under strict protection of its church rights. Parliament, people, and army all took an oath to abide by this, and Elector Frederick always kept his Catholic predilections strictly personal, never influencing the old Protestant rule; indeed, out of his own purse he completed the Reformed church in Cassel begun by his father, and endowed it.