Before George’s hour had yet come, another child was to precede the aged father to the tomb. In 1759 Anne, the eldest and least loved of the daughters of Caroline, died in Holland. At the period of her birth, the 9th of October 1709, her godmother, Queen Anne, was occupying the throne of England; her grandfather, George, was Elector of Hanover; Sophia Dorothea was languishing in the castle of Ahlden, and her father and mother bore the title of Electoral Prince and Princess. She was born at Hanover; and was five years old when, with her sister, Amelia Sophia, who was two years younger, her mother, the Princess Caroline, afterwards Queen, arrived in this country on the 15th of October 1714. She early exhibited a haughty and imperious disposition; possessed very little feeling for, and exercised very little gentleness towards, those who even rendered her a willing service. Queen Caroline sharply corrected this last defect. She discovered that the princess was accustomed to make one of her ladies-in-waiting stand by her bedside every night, and read aloud to her till she fell asleep. On one occasion the princess kept her lady standing so long, that she at last fainted from sheer fatigue. On the following night, when Queen Caroline had retired to rest, she sent for her offending daughter, and requested her to read aloud to her for a while. The princess was about to take a chair, but the Queen said she could hear her better if she read standing. Anne obeyed, and read till fatigue made her pause. ‘Go on,’ said the Queen; ‘it entertains me.’ Anne went on, sulkily and wearily; till, increasingly weary, she once more paused for rest and looked round for a seat. ‘Continue, continue,’ said the Queen, ‘I am not yet tired of listening.’ Anne burst into tears with vexation, and confessed that she _was_ tired both of standing and reading, and was ready to sink with fatigue. ‘If you feel so faint from one evening of such employment, what must your attendants feel, upon whom you force the same discipline night after night? Be less selfish, my child, in future, and do not indulge in luxuries purchased at the cost of weariness and ill-health to others.’ Anne did not profit by the lesson; and few people were warmly attached to the proud and egotistical lady. The princess spent nearly twenty years in England, and a little more than a quarter of a century in Holland; the last seven years of that period she was a widow. Her last thoughts were for the aggrandisement of her family; and, when she was battling with death, she rallied her strength in order to sign the contract of marriage between her daughter and the Prince Nassau Walberg, and to write a letter to the States General, requesting them to sanction the match. Having accomplished this, the eldest daughter of Caroline laid down the pen, and calmly awaited the death which was not long in coming.