connected with this Double-Marriage Treaty, I will mention one
other thing. Her Majesty had been in fluctuating health, all
summer; unaccountable symptoms turning up in her Majesty's
constitution, languors, qualms, especially a tendency to swelling
or increase of size, which had puzzled and alarmed her Doctors and
her. Friedrich Wilhelm, on conclusion of the Marriage-Treaty, had
been appointed to join his Father-in-law, Britannic George, at the
Gohrde, in some three weeks' time, and have a bout of hunting.
On the 8th of November, bedtime being come, he kissed his
Wilhelmina and the rest, by way of good-by; intending to start
very early on the morrow:--long journey (150 miles or so), to be
done all in one day. In the dead of the night, Queen Sophie was
seized with dreadful colics,--pangs of colic or who knows what;--
Friedrich Wilhelm is summoned; rises in the highest alarm;
none but the maids and he at hand to help; and the colic, or
whatever it may be, gets more and more dreadful.

Colic? O poor Sophie, it is travail, and no colic; and a clever
young Princess is suddenly the result! None but Friedrich Wilhelm
and the maid for midwives; mother and infant, nevertheless, doing
perfectly well. Friedrich Wilhelm did not go on the morrow, but
next day; laughed, ever and anon in loud hahas, at the part he had
been playing; and was very glad and merry. How the experienced
Sophie, whose twelfth child this is, came to commit such an
oversight is unaccountable; but the fact is certain, and made a
merry noise in Court circles. [Pollnitz, ii. 199; Wilhelmina,
i. 87, 88.]

The clever little Princess, now born in this manner, is known
by name to idle readers. She was christened AMELIA; and we shall