Notice has already been taken of the suitors who early offered themselves for the hand of the youthful princess; and for what excellent reason she selected the son of Sophia Dorothea. It was said, when she came to share the throne of England with her husband, that Heaven had especially reserved her in order to make Great Britain happy. Her early married life was one of some gaiety, if not of felicity; and Baron Pilnitz says in his Memoir, that when the Electoral family of Hanover was called to the throne of this country, she showed more cool carelessness for the additional grandeur than any of the family, whose _outward_ indifference was a matter of admiration, in the old sense of that word, to all who beheld it. The Princess Caroline, according to the baron, particularly demonstrated that she was thoroughly satisfied in her mind that she could be happy without a crown, and that ‘both her father-in-law and her husband were already kings in her eyes, because they highly deserved that title.’ Of her conduct during the period she was Princess of Wales, the same writer says that she favoured neither political party, and was equally esteemed by each. This, however, is somewhat beside the truth. The poets were as much concerned with the Princess of Wales as the politicians. Some abused, and some adored her. Addison, in 1714, assured her that the Muse waited on her person, and that she herself was Born to strengthen and to grace our isle. The same writer could not contemplate the daughter of Caroline, but that his prophetic eye professed to-- Already see the illustrious youths complain, And future monarchs doom’d to sigh in vain. Frederick (Duke of Gloucester), the elder and less loved son of Caroline, was not yet in England, but her favourite boy, William, was at her side; and of him Addison said, that he had ‘the mother’s sweetness and the father’s fire.’ The poet went on, less to prophesy than to speculate with a ‘perhaps’ on the future destiny of William of Cumberland; and it was well he put in the saving word, for nothing could be less like fact than the ‘fortune’ alluded to in the following lines:-- For thee, perhaps, even now of kingly race, Some dawning beauty blooms in every grace. Some Caroline, to Heaven’s dictates true, Who, while the sceptred rivals vainly sue, Thy inborn worth with conscious eyes shall see, And slight th’ imperial diadem for thee. Of the princess herself, he says more truly, that she-- with graceful ease And native majesty is form’d to please.