The great and splendid inheritance of the throne of England already flitted before Sophia’s dazzled eyes. English events absorbed her to the exclusion of others, and the affairs of the court of Hanover were mere village politics beside them. Sophia had one virtue for which every Englishman will love her. She loved “her country,” as she called England, with all her heart and soul and strength; “her country,” which she had never seen, which she was destined never to see; “her country,” over which her grandfather had reigned a well-nigh absolute monarch; “her country,” to which her mother had gone back, as to home, to end her days; “her country,” for which her brother, the dashing Prince Rupert, had fought on the King’s side throughout the Great Rebellion; “her country,” over which her son was to reign and her children’s children from generation to generation. The reproach of being German and alien in sympathy, later, often urged against the House of Hanover, could never have been brought against Sophia, for her heart was as “entirely English” as Queen Anne’s. She early imbibed her love for England and things English. She spoke the language fluently, far better than many a Stuart. She was learned in England’s history, its customs, and its laws. She had an English maid always with her. In her youth she had been within measurable distance of becoming Queen Consort of England; in her old age she was within an ace of being Queen Regnant.[17] It is a pity she was never Queen of England. She would have been another and a wiser Elizabeth, whom in many ways she strongly resembled—in her love of statecraft, her broad and liberal view of things, her contempt for jarring creeds, her wisdom and resource. Yes, it is a thousand pities she was never Queen of England; she would have made a wiser ruler than any of her Stuart cousins, and a far better than any of her descendants, save only the present illustrious occupant of the throne, and his revered mother, whose long and beneficent reign won for her the first place among England’s monarchs of any dynasty. ----- Footnote 17: She died less than three months before Queen Anne. ----- CHAPTER IV. PRINCE GEORGE GOES A-WOOING. (1681-1682.) He that travels in a country before he has some entrance into the language, goeth to school and not to travel.—BACON.