the court, to amuse the ‘gossips’ who had assembled in 1770 about the cradle of the young Elizabeth, and still more those who, in the following year, greeted the new Prince Ernest, one of the three sons of Charlotte destined to wear a crown. The fourth daughter of Caroline and George II. died on the 14th of June in this year, 1771. She was born on the 22nd of February, 48 years before. Before she had completed her eighteenth year she was married to Frederick, Prince of Hesse, a man whose naturally brutal temperament was rendered still more brutal after his passing over from Protestantism to Romanism. This aggravation of a naturally bad temper was not the immediate result of the change of religion, but of the political restrictions to which such change subjected him. Never had wife a more vicious and unfeeling husband than poor Mary; never had husband a more submissive and uncomplaining wife than Frederick of Hesse. His death relieved her of a most inhuman tyrant, and her last days were spent in a happy tranquillity. The person of Her Majesty at this period is described as having been easy and graceful, rather than striking or majestic. They who could not call her handsome, which she never was, compromised the matter by describing the contour of her face as delicate and pleasing. Her well-shaped forehead and her beautiful teeth, no inconsiderable items in a face, were her chief beauties. Her bright chestnut-coloured hair would have been an additional beauty to have been reckoned, but that it was generally hidden under thick layers of powder--so long, at least, as powder was in fashion. Of her hands and arms the royal lady was proud to a very late period of her life; and amateurs, in the early term of her reign, eulogised the beauties of a neck, which soon very well bore the discreet veil with which it was wisely and modestly covered. Her countenance was naturally benignant, except when flushed, as it could sometimes be, by an offended feeling; and it was naturally pallid, ‘except,’ says an anonymous writer ‘(which happened not unfrequently), when a blush of diffidence suffused her modest cheek.’