forbids the remotest allusion in female society to topics familiarly discussed by and with the wives and sisters of those great men; and the delicacy of taste that compels genius to submit to critical rule, as, all alike, the fruit of mental cultivation and refinement.

French history and memoirs down to the French revolution, and English history to the end of Sir Robert Walpole's administration, or perhaps we should say of this likewise till the French revolution, afford but too ample confirmation of our unfavourable opinion of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and, should they be deemed insufficient, as relating to two countries only, although the two most advanced in civilization, the volumes now before us supply proofs that, as relates to Germany, and we believe we may add Sweden, render all others superfluous.

But how we are to make our readers acquainted with the matter contained in these volumes is a point requiring some consideration, they not being at all susceptible of regular criticism or analysis, or calculated to afford ample extracts. They give no regular memoirs of the Countess or her family, consisting chiefly of family papers, such as extracts from the conjugal correspondence of Count and Countess Löwenhaupt, (the lady was a Königsmark,) letters addressed to Countess Aurora, a few written by her, and some few statements, memoranda, &c., in her handwriting, with a few occasional pages of explanation, connexion, and the like, by Dr. Cramer. But from these unliterary, scattered, detached, and diffuse materials, we gather a view of northern Germany at the close of the seventeenth century, too painfully impressive to pass unnoticed. It is a picture less striking from the guilt portrayed, than from the exhibition of such an utter absence of principle as is not readily conceivable. Patriotism and honour in the one sex, like chastity in the other, appear to be, not so much virtues beyond the reach of a corrupt generation, as ideas that never presented themselves to the minds of most of the personages here introduced to our acquaintance. And it must be owned that the individual who, associating with these personages, should have formed such out-of-the-way conceptions, must have been gifted with a truly Shakspearean imagination. We believe our only course will be to give a sketch of the narrative to be gathered from these papers, occasionally illustrating and substantiating it with an extract, when we find one worth inserting.

These Königsmark Memoirs begin during the thirty years' war; a war, be it remembered, the object of which was on one side the establishment of religious liberty, on the other the suppression of heresy; objects, however, which seem to have interested none of the warriors engaged except Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and the Emperor Ferdinand II. himself.

John

Christopher Königsmark, of the ancient and noble family of Königsmark, in the Old Mark of Brandenburg, entered the service of Gustavus Adolphus during this war, and certainly does not appear to have been more actuated by religious zeal than his own comrades. As a soldier he must have distinguished himself, since we find him holding separate, and in some measure independent, command of a body of troops; but we learn that he was one of those whose freebooting propensities brought disgrace upon the Swedish arms. By plunder he amassed a fortune, and, unwilling probably to forsake so lucrative an occupation, he did not choose, it should seem, to consider himself bound by the peace of Westphalia, as the Imperial city of Bremen experienced to its cost in the year 1657. This appears to have been Königsmark's last exploit as belligerent or bandit. He submitted to the general peace, received the reward of his services from Queen Christina in the title of Count, and divers estates both in Sweden Proper and in the then Swedish duchy of Bremen, and, renouncing altogether his allegiance to Brandenburg, became a Swedish subject, and the founder of the Swedish family of Königsmark.

Upon wealth and honours acquired by converting the military profession and the alleged championship of religious liberty into mere pretexts or covers for wholesale brigandage, and by a desertion of country, natural enough in a freebooter, it might be said that there rested a curse. The Count's two younger sons died early and childless; the one by a fall from his horse; the other, after affording promise of legal eminence, wandered over Europe as an adventurer, and fell at the siege of Negropont, in the service of Venice against the Turks. The eldest, Count Conrad Christopher, also died young, in foreign service, that of Holland; but he had married in Sweden, and left two sons and two daughters, the youngest of whom was the Countess Aurora, whom Voltaire has called, "the most celebrated woman of two centuries;" an opinion even he scarcely meant it as a panegyric-from which we must take leave to dissent; though we pretend not to deny the celebrity of her beauty, or that of her illegitimate son.

Of Count Conrad's sons, the youngest ran a course nearly similar to his younger uncle's; and the eldest appeared likely to do the same, had not his career been cut short by a catastrophe, in which his fate was involved with that of a Princess, destined to be Queen of England, Sophia Dorothea, wife of George I. Of him, in whom the Swedish house of Königsmark perished, we must speak more at length.

Philip Christopher, Čount Königsmark, like all those of his name and race, forsook his native land and patrimonial estates

for foreign countries, and his earliest youth he appears to have passed in the court and household of the Duke of BrunswickLüneburg, at Zell; where, it is said, he was thought a very desirable match for the Duke's daughter by an unequal marriage, until the Emperor, by conferring high rank upon the wife, changed the character of the marriage, made her Duchess, and her daughter, Sophia Dorothea, hereditary Princess of Zell, Upon reaching manhood, or perhaps upon the alteration in Sophia Dorothea's rank and prospects, he left Zell, and entered the service of the Elector of Saxony, which some years afterwards he quitted, we know not why, for that of the Elector of Hanover. Be it observed that none of these changes led him back to the original country of his family, Brandenburg.

At the Hanoverian court Königsmark found, in the neglected wife of the Electoral Prince, the daughter of his first foreign master, the Duke of Zell. The Princess Sophia Dorothea was delighted at meeting again the former playmate, whom she had once regarded as her intended husband, and she resumed her intimacy with him to a degree which, whether innocent or guilty, -a point hardly to be determined at this distance of time-was certainly indiscreet. The mass of presumptive evidence however, as well as all the documents collected by Countess Aurora, are decidedly in favour of the Princess's innocence and imprudence. That upon Count Königsmark's arrival at Hanover, he awoke a sudden and vehement passion in the bosom of Countess Platen, the mistress of the old Elector, and the sister of the Electoral Prince's mistress; and that, without the least degree of liking, he engaged in a criminal amour with her, we learn from a statement written by the Countess Aurora, which, we blush for the sex while we say it, we cannot extract or even abstract. We mention this, however, rather as corroborative of the opinion we have advanced concerning the character of the age than as matter of imputation against the then spotless though afterwards frail Swede; as will distinctly be seen if we add that a maid of honour of the Electoral Princess's, upon whose reputation even those who wished to discredit her testimony cast no suspicion, in her formal examination argued the innocence of her accused mistress upon grounds, at the nature of which we cannot even hint. It further appears, from Countess Aurora's paper, that Count Königsmark at length broke off his intrigue with Countess Platen, whose jealousy, both of the Princess and other ladies, was so unbridled and inveterate that the Electoral Princess was alarmed, and "entreated him to renew his former intercourse with the Countess, for fear of her revenge."

Strange as such advice from a Princess appears to us, her

dread of the profligate termagant's revenge was but too well founded. Countess Platen's jealousy becoming frenzy; she first thwarted all Königsmark's hopes of advancement in the Hanoverian service, whereupon he resolved to return to that of Saxony. He requested permission to resign his Hanoverian regiment, and had received his appointment as general from the Elector of Saxony, when Countess Platen, exasperated probably at the approaching escape of her victim, by exciting the suspicions of the Elector, and the jealousy of the Electoral Prince, brought on the catastrophe. From the many papers respecting this affair here published we will extract one narrative, that seems authentic in its simplicity, after we shall first have stated that a letter from Königsmark's secretary to the Countesses Löwenhaupt and Aurora Königsmark, merely stating that the Count had gone out one evening, as he frequently did, unattended, and had never returned, and that he, the secretary, knew not what to do, produced an unnoticed appeal to the Elector from the sisters, and great exertions to discover what had befallen their vanished brother :

"Bernhard Zeyer, a native of Heidelberg in the Palatinate, a waximage maker, and artist in lacker work, was engaged by the Electoral Princess to teach her his art. Being on this account continually in the Princess's apartment, he has frequently seen Count Königsmark there, who looked on while the Princess worked. He once learned in confidence, from the Electoral Princess's groom of the chambers, that the Electoral Prince was displeased about the Count, and had sworn to break his neck; which this Bernhard revealed to the Princess; who answered, 'Let them attack Königsmark, he knows how to defend himself! Some time afterwards there was an Opera; but the Princess was unwell, and kept her bed. The Opera began, and as the Count was absent as well as the Princess, first a page, and then the Hofffourier," (an officer whom not to know does not, we trust, argue ourselves unknown; literally Englished, his title should mean, Court Quarter-master, or Court Harbinger,) "were sent out for intelligence. Then the Hofffourier came back running, and whispered to the Electoral Prince and then to his Highness the Elector. But the Electoral Prince went away from the Opera with the Hoffourier. Now Bernhard saw all this, and what it meant; and as he knew the Count was with the Princess, he left the Opera secretly, to warn her; and as he went in at one door, the other door was opened, and two masked persons rushed in, exclaiming, 'So! Here I find you!' The Count, who was sitting on the bed, with his back to the door by which the two entered, started up and whipped out his sword, saying, Who can say anything unbeseeming of me?' The Princess, clasping her hands, said, 'I, a Princess, am I not allowed to converse with a gentleman?' But the masks, without listening to reason, slashed and stabbed away at the Count. But he pressed so upon both, that the Electoral Prince unmasked, and begged for his life, whilst the Hofffourier came behind the Count and ran him through between the

6

ribs with his sabre, so that he fell, saying, You are murderers before God and man, who do me wrong.' But they both of them gave him more wounds, so that he lay as dead. This Bernhard, seeing all this, hid himself behind the steps of the other room.

"Then was this Bernhard privily sent by the Princess to spy out what they would do with him.

"When the Count was in the vault, he came a little to himself, and spoke- You take a guiltless man's life. On that I'll die. But do not let me perish like a dog, in my blood and my sins. Grant me a parson, for my soul's sake!' Then the Electoral Prince went out, and the Fourier remained alone with him. Then was a stranger parson fetched, and a stranger executioner, and the Fourier fetched a great chair. And when

the Count had confessed, he was so weak that three or four of them lifted him into the chair; and there, in the Prince's presence, was his head laid at his feet. And they had tools with them, and they dug a hole in the right corner of the vault, and there they laid him, and there he must be to be found."-[If this be correct, the body reported to have been found at a later period, under the floor of one of the Princess's apartments, could not be Königsmark's.]

"When all was over, this Bernhard slipped away from the castle; and, indeed, Counsellor Lucius, who was a friend of the Princess's, sent him one of his livery to save him; for they sought him in all corners, because they had seen him in the room during the affray. * And what Bernhard Zeyer saw in the vault, he saw through a crack."

* *

The Electoral Princess spent the remainder of her life in confinement; but it is to be observed further in her justification, that attempts were repeatedly made by the Electoral family to effect a re-union betwixt her and her consort, all indignantly rejected by her. It is said that, after that consort had ascended the English throne, a similar proposal was made to the lonely Princess by some influential persons in this country, to which she replied, “ If I am guilty, I am not worthy to be your Queen; if I am innocent, your King is not worthy to be my husband." Whereupon we must observe that she is one of the few exceptions to our rule of virtue having been unknown to our friends in these volumes. What really became of Königsmark was never ascertained. His sisters received several positive assurances of his existence in confinement from different persons connected with the Electoral Court, and from the imprisoned Princess herself. But he never re-appeared; and the uncertainty respecting his fate served merely to prolong the distress of his family, and to enable some litigious relations to prevent his sisters from obtaining possession of his estates as his natural and lawful heirs.

To these sisters we now turn. The eldest, Countess Emilia, married Count Löwenhaupt, a Swedish nobleman of very old family and high rank, and it might be supposed that she would,

VOL. XIX. NO. XXXVII.

H