content with gazing; and was not guilty of the cadaverous adultery of kissing the dead wife of a dead prince.

Her life, and that of her brother, are so full of romance, and are so typical of the times and of the countries in which they lived, and moved, and had their being, that it seems worth while to endeavour to tell the story of the erring, but lovely Countess. The authorities are many, though the evidence is often conflicting, and the problem, at times, perplexing. The tale has not been fully told by any thorough, lucid or graphic German writer. Cramer is, perhaps, the best.

It may be here in place to touch briefly upon the descent of the "divine Aurora," and to allude slightly to those of her ancestors who made the most distinct mark in the story of their country and their day. The family was an old German one, belonging to the class of smaller nobles, and had its original seat in Königsmark, in the marches of Brandenburg. The name of Königsmark was first made famous by Johann Christoph, born 1600, at Kötzlin. He was a general in the Thirty Years' War, serving with the Swedes, and has left a somewhat truculent reputation, owing to his activity as an unscrupulous and cunning freebooter; but, in energy and in a rugged determination to push his own fortunes, he was a very distinguished old fighter and diplomatist. He was present at the coronation of Queen Christina in Stockholm, in 1650, and died, also in Stockholm, in 1660, leaving immense property and materials for the pompous inscription on his tomb. He was the first to link the old German house of Königsmark with Sweden. Johann Christoph was a valiant, wary, unprincipled soldier of good fortune. One of his sons, Konrad Christoph, strengthened the family alliance with Sweden by marrying Maria Christina Wrangel, born 1638, a daughter of the great Swedish Marshal, Herrmann Wrangel, and of his wife, Amalia Magdalena, born Princess of the Palatinate, of the Salzbach line. Konrad was killed by a bomb-shell at the siege of Bonn, 1673.

Next in the line appears a romantic figure, Karl Johann, son of Konrad Christoph. Karl was born at Nienburg, in 1659. He added to the warrior restlessness of his family a very marked tendency to gallantry and to adventure, in love as well as in war, which renders him still attractive. He lived in, or visited, Holland, England, France, Spain, Rome, Florence, Genoa, Venice; and he brought to our Charles II. letters sent by the King of Sweden. As a volunteer, he joined the English fleet, then waiting for a wind to carry troops to Tangier; and served under the French flag in Catalonia. He is found in Greece, and in the service of Venice; and is always active, brave, and love-loving. One little anecdote touching one of his many romantic amours is characteristic.

We may ask, with Walter Scott,

Or was the gentle page, in sooth,
A gentle paramour ?

The account rests upon the authority of a letter addressed by Charlotte Elizabeth, of the Palatinate, daughter of Elizabeth Stuart, and then the widow of the Duke of Orleans, to Caroline of Anspach, then Princess of Wales; and the German lady recounts that she knew a Count Königsmark who had been followed to the wars by an English young lady of rare and delicate beauty, who discharged, among other duties, the office of page to the Count, and -had, for that purpose, adopted dainty masculine costume. The page lived with the soldier in his tent at Chambor; and one day he described his amour to the widowed Duchess, who, returning with the Count from hunting, insisted upon seeing the fair page. The Duchess had never in her life (she says) seen anything prettier than this pretty page, who smiled, though with a little embarrassment, at the curiosity of the Duchess. The page was found to possess great brown eyes, a very delicious little nose, and a charming, laughing mouth, showing white teeth. He or she wore her own ample brown locks, fastened with large buckles. When the Count went with her to Italy, the landlady of an inn came running to the Count, crying out: "Monsieur, courez vite là-haut, votre page accouche!" We need not follow the fortunes of the daughter of the Count and of his romantic and lovely young page. The name that the daughter bore was Maria Dorothea d'Hollande von Königsmark.

Aurora's father, Konrad Christoph, had, as we have seen, died a soldier's death at Bonn in 1673. Her mother, Maria Christina, born Wrangel, was left a widow in her thirty-fifth year. That vehement, sprightly gentleman, Count Karl Johann, escaped the ordinary lot, and was never married. A soldier is better accommodated than with a wife; and may be satisfied with a pretty page. Aurora herself was certainly never married; probably she never really loved. Aurora's elder sister, Amalie Wilhelmine, married the Swedish Count, Karl Gustav von Löwenhaupt, who was soldier and diplomatist. Maria Aurora was, no doubt, born in Stade; but it is difficult to fix the precise date of her birth. Ordinary historians say that she was born in 1677 or 1678; but they forget that her father died in 1673. Dr. Cramer's careful calculations make it more than probable that she was born in 1667 or 1668; but Aurora herself, with the fantastic chronology of a beauty, was fond, in her riper years, of representing herself as younger than she really was. Her brother, Philipp Christoph, was a mere boy at the time of his father's death. During

the youth of her children, the widowed Countess moved her residence

to Hamburg.

Amalie Wilhelmine being married, there remained only the beauty-daughter to settle in life; but it was not so easy to find a suitable parti for such a brilliant young divinity. She did not want for suitors, and for renowned and even regal suitors among them. Portia of Belmont had not more; though in her case loveliness was supplemented by an heiress's wealth, while Aurora had beauty only, and was poor. "The most celebrated woman of two centuries" drew after her crowds of adorers; though royal admirers hesitated to pay the price of marriage even for the possession of such beauty, such wit, such talents, and so rare a charm. Many of the love-letters addressed to Aurora still lie before us; and we find that she had bewitched Herzog Anton Ulrich von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, who begs Aurora to visit him at Brunswick, but urges her in a letter dated November 3, 1692, for the preservation of the peace, to write to his wife the Duchess to announce the visit for which the elderly gallant longed most ardently. The Herzog Friedrich Wilhelm von Mecklenburg-Schwerin (son of the above) is another of her amatory correspondents, and he prays for a portrait of the charmer. Her brother, Philipp Christoph, Count Königsmark, writes to her from Hanover, dated January 10, 1693, about her matrimonial projects and prospects; and speaks of his sister as "halb verlobt," half-engaged; and alludes to various aspirants, among whom we find Herr M——, a foolish Graf von Waidel, Graf von Hohenlohe, and another. nameless suitor, strongly favoured by the brother, who had 6,000 dollars of income, and could settle 30,000 dollars upon Aurora. But the most passionate of her correspondents was Gustav Horn, related in some way to his divinity, and grandson of the well-known Swedish Field-marshal, Gustav Horn. The genuine warmth of this young man's adoration inspires us with a certain respect and sympathy, and in one of his letters he gives us the following picture of his hotly-loved, incomparable mistress. He ascribes to her a wealth of physical beauty, and says that her figure was neither too stout nor too slim, and that all parts of her exquisite body were formed in perfect harmony. Her delicate complexion evinces the bloom of youth and health. Her hair is of unusual fulness and darkness; the face is of a fine oval, and the forehead open and high. Her eyes are large, dark, and full of fire, and capable of most expressive glances. The nose is tenderly modelled, the mouth small, the lips always glowing with lively red, the teeth white, regular, and of equal size. Then he exclaims, rhapsodically, that all about her must strike

the least susceptible beholder with a kind of sacred delight. He forgot to mention the merits, recorded by others, of her fine foot, lovely hands and arms, and of her glorious bust. Always brilliant, this almost peerless creature was sweet-tempered, though witty, and had the added charm of gracious and most perfect manners.

Indeed, she was becoming renowned in all German courts as a paragon of loveliness, of learning, of music, of poetry, and of coquetry; but her reputation was, as yet, quite untarnished. In Hanover she excited an enthusiasm of passion and of admiration; and we find intimate letters (in 1692) to her from the Kurfürstin von Braunschweig-Lüneburg, the Electress Sophia, and from the illfated Erbprinzessin von Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Sophia Dorothea (geb. Prinzessin v. Br.-Zelle), who was soon to be so fatally connected with Aurora's surviving brother.

The mother of Aurora is but a shadowy figure in the memoirs of the time, and is only interesting to us as being the mother of so splendid a daughter. The widowed Countess died in Stockholm, December 17, 1691; she was fifty-three years of age. There is a mass of Löwenhaupt correspondence extant. Amalia was far inferior to Aurora in all gifts and graces. The wedded pair got on pretty well together, though Löwenhaupt, absorbed in military duty, was often away, and for long absences, from his wife. She once caused that worthy man great uneasiness by a pronounced flirtation with Fürst von Fürstenberg; and Löwenhaupt often gave his wife causes of jealousy. Löwenhaupt was somewhat addicted to excess in wine, and his intemperance provoked remonstrances and regrets from his wife. The pair had several children. They had for some time a difficult part to play, owing to being servants, if not subjects, of two conflicting powers-Saxony and Sweden-nor were their difficulties lessened after Aurora ceased to have influence in Saxony. They had property in Germany and in Sweden.

Next we turn to the contemplation of a very striking figure, memorable for its fatal beauty, for its dissolute heartlessness, and for its tragic end. This is Philipp Christoph, born, it is supposed, in 1662, the younger of the two brothers of the incomparable Aurora, and worthy for his many physical gifts and beauties-gifts unalloyed by conscience or by principle-to be the brother of such a loosely winsome lady. Contemporary records are conclusive as to his perfect figure, his regularly handsome face, his liveliness and charm, his seductive manner, and his success in the favour of women. The handsome young officer was indeed a man of bonnes fortunes, and was as depraved as he was good-looking. Palmblad gives a very

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detailed account of the adventures of the brothers Königsmark at the Court of Charles II., both brothers having been great favourites of our Merry Monarch. Palmblad is a writer who raises a rather cumbrous superstructure of fiction upon a real basis of fact, and creates an historical romance which is, however, not always satisfactorily dramatic. Still, it must be remembered, that we owe to Palmblad the publication of those mad, passionate letters to her lover of the unhappy and infatuated Sophia Dorothea. Karl Johann, the adventurous knight-errant, has left a stain of blood upon his memory. The murder of Thomas Thynn was committed solely in his interest, and probably at his instigation. His accomplices or tools were executed; but Karl Johann himself escaped death on the scaffold owing to the favour and protection of the Court.

Thynn and the romantic Count were rivals for the hand of Lady Ogle, a young and wealthy widow of little more than fourteen, who had been married at thirteen years of age. The reputation of the needy, if handsome, adventurer told against him with the lady's relatives, who preferred Thynn for a husband; and this preference induced the Count to assassinate a too successful rival. The murder occurred on February 12, 1682, and Königsmark escaped and returned to Germany.

Philipp Christoph, a splendid young cavalier, gifted with all the externals, if with nothing of the true spirit of chivalry, had been sent in his early youth, in order that he might there receive a knightly education and training, to the Court of Georg Wilhelm, reigning Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, at Zelle, who was the father of Sophia Dorothea. Her mother was Eleonore, made Countess of Harburg, born Emiers d'Albreuse, so that Sophia Dorothea was not vollbürtig. The young cavalier and the young Princess loved each other as boy and girl, and we read of kissings and embracings and of great familiarity. Philipp Christoph would have gladly married the daughter of a reigning duke; but he was evidently no match for Sophia Dorothea, for whom the Electress Sophia of Hanover, daughter of Friedrich V. of the Palatinate, and grand-daughter of our James I., arranged a marriage with her son, Georg Ludwig, afterwards our George I., a prince who inherited nothing of the wit, the intellect, the stately charm of his august mother, the patroness of science and philosophy, and the friend of Leibnitz.

Sophia, the politic, treated the infidelities of her husband with sublime and stoical ir difference. She did not seem to know that they ever existed; but she was ambitious and active for the advantage of her House. Before she married her son to Sophia Dorothea,