Of the Graces who were the daughters of Caroline, the marriage of one began now to be canvassed. Meanwhile, there was much food for mere talk in common passing events at home. The courtiers had to express sympathy at their Majesties’ being upset in their carriage, when travelling only from Kew to London. Then the son of a Stuart had just died in London. He was that Duke of Cleveland who was the eldest son of Charles II. and Barbara Villiers. In the year 1731 died two far more remarkable people. On the 8th of April ‘Mrs. Elizabeth Cromwell, daughter of Richard Cromwell, the Protector, and grand-daughter of Oliver Cromwell, died at her house in Bedford Row, in the eighty-second year of her age.’ In the same month passed away a man whose writings as much amused Caroline as they have done commoner people--Defoe. He had a not much superior intellectual training to that of Stephen Duck, but he was ‘one of the best English writers that ever had so mean an education.’ The deaths in the same year of the eccentric and profligate Duke of Wharton, and of the relict of that Duke of Monmouth who lost his head for rebellion against James II., gave further subject of conversation in the court circle; where, if it was understood that death was inevitable and necessary, no one could understand what had induced Dr. Nichols, of Trinity College, Cambridge, to steal books from the libraries in that university town. The court was highly merry at the precipitate flight of the doctor, after he was found out; but there was double the mirth the next year at the awkwardness of the Emperor of Germany, who, happening to fire at a stag, chanced to shoot Prince Schwartzenberg, his master of the horse. But we turn from these matters to those of wooing and marriage. In the year 1733 the proud and eldest daughter of Caroline, she who had expressed her vexation at having brothers, who stood between her and the succession to the crown--a crown, to wear which for a day, she averred she would willingly die when the day was over--in the year above named, the Princess Anne had reached the mature age of twenty-four, and her hand yet remained disengaged. Neither crown nor suitor had yet been placed at her disposal. A suitor _with_ a crown was once, however, very nearly on the point of fulfilling the great object of her ambition, and that when she was not more than sixteen years of age. The lover proposed was no less a potentate than Louis XV., and he would have offered her a seat on a throne, which, proud as she was, she might have accepted without much condescension.