without encountering the abandoned female favourites of her husband, whose presence beneath such a roof was the most flagrant of outrages. Her very sense of helplessness was a great grief to her. All that her own mother could do when her daughter complained to her of the presence near her of her husband’s mistress, was to advise her to imitate, on this point, the indifference of her mother-in-law, and make the best of it! The Countess von Platen kept greater state in Hanover than Sophia Dorothea herself. In her own palatial mansion two dozen servants helped her helplessness. Every morning she had ‘a circle,’ as if she were a royal lady holding a court. Her dinners were costly banquets; her ‘evenings’ were renowned for the brilliancy of her fêtes and the reckless fury of gambling. Sophia Dorothea, whose talent for listening and for putting apt and sympathetic questions when the conversation required it, gave considerable satisfaction to her clever, but somewhat pedantic mother-in-law, failed to at all satisfy the Countess von Platen. This lady had tried to bring the princess into something like sympathy with herself, but she found only antipathy. She detested Sophia Dorothea accordingly, and she obtained permission to invite her sister, Madame von Busche, to return to Hanover. The prime mover of the hatred of George Louis for his consort was the Countess von Platen, and this fact was hardly known to George Louis himself. There was one thing in which that individual had a fixed belief: his own sagacity and, it may be added, his own imaginary independence of outward influences. He _was_ profound in some things; but, as frequently happens with persons who fancy themselves deep in all, he was very shallow in many. It was often impossible to guess his purpose, but quite as often his thoughts were as clearly discernible as the pebbles in the bed of a transparent brook. The Countess von Platen saw through him thoroughly, and she employed her discernment for the furtherance of her own detestable objects. Sophia Dorothea had, however, contrived to win the good opinion of her mother-in-law, and also the warm favour of Ernest Augustus. The latter took her with him on a journey he made to Switzerland and Italy. It was on this journey that her portrait was taken, at Venice, by Gascar, who, when in England, had painted, among others, that of Louise de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. This portrait of Sophia Dorothea is still in existence in Germany. The beauty of the lady represented is so remarkable, it is said, as to justify the admiration she generally excited. This admiration sometimes went beyond decent bounds. One French adorer, the celebrated and eccentric Marquis de Lassay, was impudent enough, not only to address declarations of love to her, but subsequently, in his ‘Memoirs,’ to publish his letters. It has not yet occurred to the ever-busy autograph fabricators on the continent to forge the supposed replies of the princess.