George Louis was not shaped for a lover. He was mean in person and in character. George was brave indeed; to none of the princes of the House of Brunswick can be denied the possession of bravery. In all the bloody and useless wars of the period, he had distinguished himself by his dauntless courage and his cool self-possession. He was not heroic, but he really looked heroic at the head of his squadron, charging across the battle-field, and carrying his sword and his fringed and feathered hat into the very thickest of the fray. He did not fail, it may be added, in one of the characteristics of bravery, humanity on the field. For a wounded foe he had a thorough respect. Out of the field of battle George Louis was an extremely ordinary personage, except in his vices. He was coarsely minded and coarsely spoken, and his profligacy was so extreme of character--it bore about it so little of what Lord Chesterfield recommended when he said a man might be gentlemanlike even in his vices--that the bishop, easy as he was both as parent and prelate, and rich as he was himself in evil example to a son who needed no such warrant to plunge headlong into sin--even the bishop felt uncomfortable for awhile. He thought, however, that marriage would cure profligacy. George Louis was now in his twenty-second year. He was born in 1660, and he had recently acquired increase of importance from the tact of his sire having succeeded to the estates, grandeur, and expectations of his predecessor, Duke John Frederick. The latter was on his way to Rome, in 1679, a city which he much loved, holding in respect a good portion of what is taught there. He was proceeding thither with a view of a little more of pleasure and something therewith of instruction, when a sudden attack of illness carried him off; and his death excited as much grief in the bishop as it possibly could in one who had little reverence for the duke, by whose death he profited largely. When the bishop (now Duke Ernest Augustus, of Hanover), as a natural consequence of this death, established a gayer court at Hanover than had ever yet been seen there, and had raised George Louis to the rank of a ‘Crown Prince’--a title given to many heirs who could inherit nothing but coronets--the last-named individual began to consider speculatively as to what royal lady he might, with greatest prospect of advantage to himself, make offer of his hand.