Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, vol 1 | Page 4

and wonder.
Lady Sarah, too, became blind in her age, and, alas! she had trodden darker paths than any prepared for her feet by the visitation of God.
Queen Charlotte had come with her sense and spirit, and ruled for more than fifty years over a pure Court in England. The German princess of sixteen, with her spare little person and large mouth which prevented her from being comely, and her solitary accomplishment of playing on the harpsichord with as much correctness and taste as if she had been taught by Mr. Handel himself, had identified herself with the nation, so that no suspicion of foreign proclivities ever attached to her. Queen Charlotte bore her trials gravely; while those who came nearest to her could tell that she was not only a fierce little dragon of virtue, as she has been described, but a loving woman, full of love's wounds and scars.
The family of George III. and Queen Charlotte consisted of seven sons and his daughters, besides two sons who died in infancy.
George, Prince of Wales, married, 1795, his cousin, Princess Caroline of Brunswick, daughter of the reigning Duke and of Princess Augusta, sister of George III. The Prince and Princess of Wales separated soon after their marriage. Their only child was Princess Charlotte of Wales.
Frederick, Duke of York, married, 1791, Princess Frederica, daughter of the reigning King of Prussia. The couple were childless.
William, Duke of Clarence, married, 1818, Princess Adelaide, of Saxe-Meiningen. Two daughters were born to them, but both died in infancy.
Edward, Duke of Kent, married, 1818, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, widow of the Prince of Leiningen. Their only child is QUEEN VICTORIA.
Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, married, 1815, Princess Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, widow, first of Prince Frederick Louis of Prussia, and second, of the Prince of Saliris-Braunfels. Their only child was George V., King of Hanover.
Augustus, Duke of Sussex, married morganatically.
Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, married, 1818, Princess Augusta of Hesse-Cassel, daughter of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. They had three children--George, Duke of Cambridge; Princess Augusta, Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz; and Princess Mary, Duchess of Teck.
The daughters of King George and Queen Charlotte were:--
The Princess Royal, married, 1797, the Prince, afterwards King, of Wurtemberg. Childless.
Princess Augusta, unmarried.
Princess Elizabeth, married, 1818, the Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg. Childless.
Princess Mary, married, 1816, her cousin, William, Duke of Gloucester. Childless.
Princess Sophia, unmarried.
Princess Amelia, unmarried.
In 1817 the pathetic idyl, wrought out amidst harsh discord, had found its earthly close in the family vault at Windsor, amidst the lamentations of the whole nation. Princess Charlotte, the candid, fearless, affectionate girl, whose youth had been clouded by the sins and follies of others, but to whom the country had turned as to a stay for the future--fragile, indeed, yet still full of hope--had wedded well, known a year of blissful companionship, and then died in giving birth to a dead heir. It is sixty-five years since that November day, when the bonfires, ready to be lit at every town "cross," on every hill-side, remained dark and cold. Men looked at each other in blank dismay; women wept for the blushing, smiling bride, who had driven with her grandmother through the park on her way to be married not so many months before. There are comparatively few people alive who had come to man's or woman's estate when the shock was experienced; but we have all heard from our predecessors the story which has lent to Claremont a tender, pensive grace, especially for royal young pairs.
Old Queen Charlotte nerved herself to make a last public appearance on the 11th of July, 1818, four months before her death. It was in her presence, at Kew, that a royal marriage and re-marriage were celebrated that day. The Duke of Clarence was married to Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, and the Duke of Kent was re-married, in strict accordance with the English Royal Marriage Act, to Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, the widowed Princess of Leiningen. The last couple had been already united at Coburg in the month of May. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London officiated at the double ceremony. The brides were given away by the Prince Regent. The Queen retired immediately afterwards. But a grand banquet, at which the Prince Regent presided, was given at six o'clock in the evening. An hour later the Duke and Duchess of Kent drove off in her brother, Prince Leopold's, carriage to Claremont.
Of the two bridegrooms we have glimpses from Baron Stockmar, a shrewd observer, who was no flatterer.
The Duke of Clarence, at fifty-three years of age, was the "smallest and least good-looking of the brothers, decidedly like his mother, as talkative as the rest;" and we may add that he was also endowed with a sailor-like frankness, cordiality, and good humour, which did not, however, prevent stormy ebullitions of temper, that recommended him