"After coffee, the card-table was brought, and they sat down to whist, the young couple being always partners, the others changing. You know _my superiority_ at whist, and the unfairness of my sitting down with unskilful players; I therefore did not obey command, and from ignorance of the _delicacy_ of my motives, am recommended to study Hoyle before my second visit there next week, which indeed must be a very short one." "The prince and princess retire at eleven o'clock." We leave out the link in the narrative that connects this pleasant description with the melancholy scene described in the following (for it is written in a sad taste) and only add, that the most amiable and beloved of women died within a month from the date of the above letter. "Popular love and the enthusiasm of sorrow, never towards greatness, perhaps so real, saw in her a promised Elizabeth, and while yet she lived it was a character which I should sincerely have assigned to her, as that which she would most nearly have approached: certain I am that she would have been a true monarch--have loved her people: charity and justice, high integrity (as I have stated), frankness and humanity, were essentials and fixed in her character: her mind seemed to have nothing of subtlety or littleness in it, and she had all the courage of her station." "She once said, 'I am a great coward, but I bluster it out like the best of them till the danger's over.' I was told by one of the members of the council awaiting her delivery, that Dr. Baillie came in, and said in answer to some inquiries, 'She's doing very well: she'll not die of fear: she puts a good Brunswick face upon the matter.' She had a surprisingly quick ear, which I was pleasantly warned of: whilst playing whist, which being played for shillings, was not the most silent game I ever witnessed, she would suddenly reply to something that the baron or I would be talking of, in the lowest tone, at the end of the room, whilst her companions at the table were ignorant of the cause of her observations." "I have increased respect for the Bishop of Salisbury, because he appeared to have fully performed his duty in her education. She had, as I have said, great knowledge of the history of this country, and in the businesses of life, and a readiness in anecdotes of political parties in former reigns." "How often I see her now entering the room (constantly on his arm) with slow but firm step, always erect--and the small but elegant proportion of her head to her figure, of course more striking from her situation. Her features, as you see, were beautifully cut; her clear blue eye, so open, so like the fearless purity of truth, that the most experienced parasite must have turned from it when he dared to _lie_."