George William’s subjects did not appreciate these frequent absences of their liege lord, nor did they approve of the Italian singers and dancers and the Venetian son whom he brought back with him to his prim little court. They became exceedingly restive, and pointed out that there was need of a duchess and an heir. Duke Christian of Celle was unwed, and Duke George William of Hanover, who was next in succession, was a bachelor too. Their subjects, both of Celle and Hanover, considered this a neglect of duty on the part of their princes, and, remonstrances having no avail, at last the members of the state in Hanover threatened to cut short George William’s allowance if he did not marry forthwith. Moreover, knowing his predilections, they intimated plainly that they wished no foreign bride, and suggested that the Princess Sophia, the orphan daughter of the luckless Frederick Prince Palatine, ex-King of Bohemia (by the beautiful Elizabeth, daughter of James I. of England), would be a suitable duchess. The Princess Sophia was well past her first youth, and was understood to be anxious to settle herself in life. She was then living with her brother, the Elector Palatine of the Rhenish provinces, at Heidelberg. The household was not a happy one, for the Elector and his wife were leading a cat-and-dog life, and Sophia’s lot, as a poor relative, was hardly enviable. She was a healthy little body, decidedly good-looking, though she had not inherited the beauty of her mother, “The Queen of Hearts”. “My hair,” she writes, “was light brown and in natural curls; my general appearance gay and lightsome; my figure good, but not very tall; my deportment that of a princess. I take no pleasure in remembering all the rest, of which my mirror shows me nothing left.” She had sharp wits and a sharp tongue, and the life she had led, travelling about Europe in the poverty-stricken court of Queen Elizabeth, had developed both to an unusual degree. Yet notwithstanding the financial troubles of her youth, “my spirits,” she continues, “were so high in those days that everything amused me; the misfortunes of my house were unable to depress them, although at times we had to make repasts richer than Cleopatra’s, and nothing was eaten at court but pearls and diamonds”. This is one of Sophia’s figures of speech, for it is to be feared that the pearls and diamonds had long since gone to the Jews. Despite her poverty, or perhaps in consequence of it, Sophia was inordinately proud of her birth, especially her English ancestry, on which she was never tired of expatiating. At one time she had been put forward as a suitable wife for her first cousin, the Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles II. of England, and with that view had been carefully trained in the English language and English ways. The match fell through, and so, in the after years, did many others, some good, some indifferent, which had been projected for her by her relations. As