Of the affection which existed between the Queen and her husband here is a pretty incident:--‘The Queen had nobody but myself with her one morning, when the King hastily entered the room with some letters in his hand, and addressing her in German, which he spoke very fast, and with much apparent interest in what he said, he brought the letters up to her and put them into her hand. She received them with much agitation, but evidently of a much pleased sort, and endeavoured to kiss his hand as he held them. He would not let her, but made an effort, with a countenance of the highest satisfaction, to kiss her. I saw instantly in her eyes a forgetfulness at the moment that any one was present, while, drawing away her hand, she presented him her cheek. He accepted her kindness with the same frank affection that she offered it, and the next moment they both spoke English, and talked upon common and general subjects. What they said I am far enough from knowing; but the whole was too rapid to give me time to quit the room, and I could not but see with pleasure that the Queen had received some favour with which she was sensibly delighted, and that the King, in her acknowledgments, was happily and amply paid.’[3] This sort of incident, it may be said, is of commonplace frequency in private life, short of the hand-kissing; but it also serves to show that there was an affection existing at this period which, happily, is _not_ a rare one in common life. And Charlotte could condescend to the level of that so-called common life, and to them who belonged to it exhibit her natural goodness. Witness for her the directions which she sent on a cold November morning to good old and parcel-blind Mrs. Delany. ‘Tell her,’ said she, ‘that this morning is so very cold and wet that I think she will suffer by going to church. Tell her, therefore, that _Dr. Queen_ is of opinion she had better stay and say her prayers at home.’ She showed her concern still more when, after having lent to Miss Burney that abominable and absurd tragedy of Horace Walpole’s, ‘The Mysterious Mother,’ she presented her with Ogden’s Sermons, wherewith to sweeten her imagination. Perhaps Hurd, Bishop of Worcester, on his visit to Windsor this year, rather underrated the royal power to appreciate sermons. Mrs. Delany asked him for a copy of one which he had preached before their Majesties. The prelate answered that the sermon would not do at all for her. It was a mere plain Christian sermon, he said, made for the King and Queen, but it wouldn’t do for a _bel esprit_.