The young nobility, who had formed great expectations of the splendour and gaiety that were to result, as they thought, from the establishment of a new court, with a young couple at the head of it, were miserably disappointed that pleasure alone was not the deity enshrined in the royal dwelling. To the Queen’s palace they gave the name of Holyrood House, intending to denote thereby that it was the mere abode of chill, gloom, and meanness. But, be this as it may, the English court was now the only court in Europe at which vice was discountenanced, and virtue set as an example and insisted on in others. With respect to the routine followed there, it certainly lacked excitement, but was hardly the worse for that. The Queen passed most of her mornings in receiving instruction from Dr. Majendie in the English tongue. She was an apt scholar, improved rapidly, and though she never spoke or wrote with elegance, yet she learned to appreciate our best authors justly, and was remarkable for the perfection of taste and manner with which she read aloud. Needle-work followed study, and exercise followed needle-work. The Queen usually rode or walked in company with the King till dinner-time; and in the evening she played on the harpsichord, or sang aloud--and this she could do almost _en artiste_; or she took share in a homely game of cribbage, and closed the innocently spent day with a dance. ‘And so to bed,’ as Mr. Pepys would say--without supper. The routine was something changed when her Majesty’s brother, Prince Charles of Strelitz, became a visitor at the English court in February 1762. He was a prince short of stature, but well-made, had fine eyes and teeth, and a very persuasive way with him. So persuasive, indeed, that he at one time contrived to express from the King 30,000_l._ out of the civil-list revenue, to pay the debts the prince had contracted with German creditors.