In her happier innocent days she had two children, a King that is to be, and a Queen; George II.

of England, Sophie Dorothee of Prussia; but must not now call them hers, or ever see them again.
This was the Konigsmark tragedy at Hanover; fast ripening towards its catastrophe while little Friedrich Wilhelm was there.

It has been, ever since, a rumor and dubious frightful mystery to mankind: but within these few years, by curious accidents (thefts, discoveries of written documents, in various countries, and diligent study of them), it has at length become a certainty and clear fact, to those who are curious about it.

Fact surely of a rather horrible sort;--yet better, I must say, than was suspected: not quite so bad in the state of fact as in that of rumor.

Crime enough is in it, sin and folly on both sides; there is killing too, but NOT assassination (as it turns out); on the whole there is nothing of atrocity, or nothing that was not accidental, unavoidable;--and there is a certain greatness of DECORUM on the part of those Hanover Princes and official gentlemen, a depth of silence, of polite stoicism, which deserves more praise than it will get in our times.