The Pictorial History of England, Vol. 6 of 6: Being a History of the People, as Well as a History of the Kingdom (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

Excerpt from The Pictorial History of England, Vol. 6 of 6: Being a History of the People, as Well as a History of the Kingdom

In some respects, however, Caroline would have been a promising subject for the satirist; for she affected to combine the characters of a philosopher and a princess royal and proudly royal, a beauty and a wit, a metaphysician and a divine - though, in divinity, her notions were scarcely considered strictly orthodox. Her levees, says Archdeacon Core, were a strange picture of the motley cha reeter and manners of a queen and a learned woman. She received company while she was at her toilet; prayers, and sometimes a semen, were read, learned men and divines were intermixed with courtiers and ladies of the household; the conversation turned on metaphysical subjects, blended with repartees, sallies of mirth, and the tittle-tattle of a drawing-room. On the table, says Lord Mahon, perhaps, lay heaped together the newest ode by Stephen Duck upon her beauty, her last letter from Leibnitz upon free-will, and a most high-wrought panegyric of Dr. Clarke on her 'inimitable sweetness of temper,' 'impartial love of truth,' and very particular and uncommon degree of knowledge, even on matters of the most abstract speculation.' 1 She took great delight in making theologians dispute knotty points in her presence; in perplexing them with questions con cerning the op ite doctrines of the different Christian churc es, and in carrying on a corre spondence with them by means of her bedchamber woman Mrs. (legion, afterwards Lady Sundon. In short, her h was never free of divines and philosophers, poets, and authors of all descriptions; and it may be that all this did not tend to create in her husband a love of books and letters and literary men. George, who loved his army extra vagantly, and who was nick-named by the J acohites the Captain, or the Little Captain, would rather discourse with a comet of horse or with a good corporal of grenadiers, than with all the Leibnitzes, Clarkes, Gays, and' Popes in the world. But mixed with these femme savante absurdities, there was a good fund of homely sense, discretion, and dignity; and Carolina's moral character was without a blemish. During ten tars she was more king than her husband, who t 'dom went wrong except when led contrary to her advice or suggestion. Yet she was never arrogant, or seemed self-willed, to her husband.

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