"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