George II. gave the Garter to that deformed Prince of Orange who married his excitable daughter Anne. The same honor was conferred on Prince Frederick of Hesse Cassel, who espoused George’s amiable daughter Mary; Prince Frederick of Saxe Gotha, the Duke of Saxe Weisenfels, the Margrave of Anspach, the fatherless son of the Prince of Orange last named, and, worthiest of all, that Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick who won the honor by gaining the battle of Minden. He was invested with cap, habit, and decorations, in front of his tent and in the face of his whole army. His gallant enemy, De Broglie, to do honor to the new knight, proclaimed a suspension of arms for the day, drew up his own troops where they could witness the spectacle of courage and skill receiving their reward, and with his principal officers dining with the Prince in the evening. “Each party,” says Miss Banks, “returned at night to his army, in order to recommence the hostilities they were engaged in, by order of their respective nations, against each other, on the next rising of the sun.” I do not know what this anecdote most proves--the cruel absurdity of war, or the true chivalry of warriors. The era of George III. was indeed that in which foreign princes, sovereign and something less than that, abounded in the order. The first who received the Garter was the brother of Queen Charlotte, the reigning Duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz. Then came the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who married Augusta, the sister of George III. Caroline of Brunswick was the issue of this marriage. Of the kings, _roitelets_, and petty princes of Germany who were added to the Garter, or rather, had the Garter added to them, it is not worth while speaking; but there is an incident connected with the foreign knights which _does_ merit to be preserved. When Bonaparte founded the Legion of Honor, he prevailed on the King of Prussia (willing to take anything for his own, and reluctant to sacrifice anything for the public good) to accept the cross of the Legion for himself, and several others assigned to him for distribution. The king rendered himself justly abhorred for this disgraceful act; but he found small German princes quite as eager as he was to wear the badge of the then enemy of Europe. A noble exception presented itself in the person of the Duke of Brunswick, a Knight of the Garter, to whom the wretched king sent the insignia of the French order in 1805. The duke, in a letter to the king, refused to accept such honor, “because, in his quality of Knight of the most noble Order of the Garter, he was prevented from receiving any badge of chivalry instituted by a person at war with the sovereign of that order.” The Prussian king found an easier conscience in the Prince of Hesse Cassel, who was also a Knight of the Garter. This individual, mean and double-faced as the king, wore the cross of the Legion of Honor with the Garter. At _that_ troubled period, it was