There were loyal addresses and court festivities, balls, plays, and feastings for a week on end in Hanover, and the bride won golden opinions by her beauty and grace. The events of the last few weeks had tamed her spirit, and she wore an air of timid dignity which, joined to her extreme youth, touched all hearts and even softened at first some of the dislike of her mother-in-law and some of the roughness of her husband. Ernest Augustus was much pleased with Sophie Dorothea, and stood between her and her enemies. Unlike his wife, he had no prejudice against his niece, and he never could resist a pretty face. Now that she had come to him as his daughter-in-law, filling his coffers with her dowry, and adding to the brightness of his court with her beauty, he was exceedingly well disposed towards her. With all his faults, Ernest Augustus was no tyrant, but on the whole a kind-hearted man, and throughout Sophie Dorothea’s married life at Hanover he was perhaps her best friend, over-indulgent in some things, culpably lax in others, but without the malevolence of his wife or the cold brutality of his son. To the girl bride, who had been reared under her parents’ wing in quiet little Celle, and sheltered from the knowledge of evil, the court of Hanover, with its meretricious gaiety and brilliance, its laxity of morals and profligacy of manners, must have seemed like another world, and not a better one. The Hanover[22] to which Sophie Dorothea came could not boast of a magnificent schloss like Celle, but it had three palaces instead of one. There was the Alte Palais, where the young Princess lived at first, an unpretending building in the centre of the town; across the street was the Leine Schloss, where also were apartments for the ducal family, a larger and more imposing building, used for state functions and entertainments; and half an hour’s drive outside Hanover lay the country residence of Herrenhausen, a favourite retreat of the Duchess Sophia, then a modest place, but which she later rebuilt, beautified, and enlarged. To this day Herrenhausen retains its charm. Its quaint, formal gardens with interminable hedges of clipped hornbeam, its colossal fountains and monstrous stucco cupids, its orangery, terraces, and ornamental water, make it unlike anything else in Europe. No wonder the first two Georges were so fond of it, no wonder they were eager to run away from gloomy London to the delights of this homely little schloss, nestling in the midst of a great park and approached from the outer world by a long avenue of limes. When we have seen Herrenhausen we can understand the _heimweh_ of the earlier Georges, and their regret at leaving the cosy delights of their snug little principality to take up the uneasy crown of England. ----- Footnote 22: