It is said that the proposal to unite Louis XV. and the Princess Anne originated with the French minister, the Duke de Bourbon, and that the project was entertained with much favour and complacency, until it suddenly occurred to some one that if the princess became queen in France, she would be expected to conform to the religion of France. This, it was urged, could not be thought of by a family which was a reigning family only by virtue of its pre-eminent Protestantism. It does not seem to have occurred to any one that when Maria Henrietta espoused Charles I., she had not been even asked to become a professed member of the Church of England, and that we might have asked for the same toleration in France for the daughter of Caroline as had been given in England to the daughter of the ‘Grand Henri.’ However this may be, the affair was not pursued to its end, and Caroline could not say to her daughter, as Stanislas said to his on the morning he received an offer for her from the young King Louis:--‘_Bon jour! ma fille: vous êtes Reine de France!_’ Anne was unlucky. She lived moodily on for some half-dozen years, and, nothing more advantageous offering, she looked good-naturedly on one of the ugliest princes in Europe. But then he happened to be a sovereign prince in his way. This was the Prince of Orange, who resembled Alexander the Great only in having a wry neck and a halt in his gait. But he also had other deformities from which the Macedonian was free. George and Caroline were equally indisposed to accept the prince for a son-in-law, and the parental disinclination was expressed in words to the effect that neither King nor Queen would force the feelings of their daughter, whom they left free to accept or reject the misshapen suitor who aspired to the plump hand and proud person of the Princess Anne. The lady thought of her increasing years; that lovers were not to be found on every bush, especially sovereign lovers; and, remembering that there were Princesses of England before her who had contrived to live in much state and a certain degree of happiness as Princesses of Orange, she declared her intention of following the same course, and compelling her ambition to stoop to the same modest fortune.