Of course it is a horrible thought that any one could be sufficiently wicked and cruel to forge letters with the idea of slaying reputations by the forgery. But this wickedness and this cruelty were not uncommon. Scores upon scores of letters have been forged in France alone in order to destroy the reputation of Sir Isaac Newton. As a mere matter of profitable business, the manufactory of forged letters, simply for the market, is in the greatest possible activity. A letter by any one, written at any time, eagerly demanded, is sure to be supplied after a while. Letters, with other purpose in view than mere profit--intended to turn up in long after years, in order to fasten a calumny on some victim--are also not uncommon. One instance may be cited in the case of the multitudinous forged letters of Shelley. The late Mr. Moxon published a volume of Shelley letters; and soon after he withdrew the volume, on discovery that every one of these letters was a forgery. Stray letters of Shelley, however, continued to come into the market. Letters to his wife of the most confidential nature, containing vile aspersions against his father, were bought as genuine by Sir Percy Shelley, the poet’s son. These, too, were discovered to be forgeries and were destroyed. One of these precious epistles, addressed to Byron, and bearing Shelley’s signature, contained an assertion against the fidelity of ‘Harriet.’ Whoever bought it paid six guineas for a calumny against a dead and defenceless woman, to which was appended the forged signature of her dead and defenceless husband. Till something more is known of the history of the alleged correspondence between Sophia Dorothea and Königsmark--of which correspondence nothing was known to the world till more than a century after her death--let us put against it her own assertions of her innocence. It is only a woman’s word; but it was asserted on solemn occasions, and it may surely be accepted against the letters which were not put forth till long after she, too, was dead and defenceless, who, when living, was not charged with the guilt which this mysterious correspondence would cast heavily upon her. Sophia Dorothea, from the time her husband ascended the throne of Great Britain, was, in a sort of loving sorrow, called by the few left to love her--the Queen. She was indeed an uncrowned Queen of England. As little really of a queen as Caroline of Brunswick in after years. But her true place, nevertheless, is among them. Her blood--the blood of the French Protestant, Seigneur D’Olbreuse--has doubly asserted itself. Through the son of Sophia Dorothea and his descendants, it flows in the veins of that honoured lady, the Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India. Through the daughter of Sophia Dorothea, it is inherited by the Emperor of Germany; and the inheritance was enriched and strengthened when the Princess Royal of England became the wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, the heir of the German Empire.