The New era. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1865-1871, 1865-09-21

with the two Hanoverian ladies-not
only with the princess, but with another
lady powerful in Hanover. The countess
Platen, the old favorite Of the Elector,
hated the young Electoral prilmtss. The
young lady had a lively Wit, and con
stantly made fun Of the cd one. The
princess jokes We're conveyed t. The old
Platen, iust as our idle wor sare carried
about at this present dr.. ara g they
both hated each other.
Thee characters in the tragedy, OF which
the curtain was now about to fall, are
about as dark a set as eye ever rested on.
There is the jolly prince, shrewd, selfish,
scheming, loving his cups and his ease
q think his good-humor makes the
tragedy but darker;1 his princess, who
speaks little, but observes all his old,
painted Jezebel Of a mistress; his son.
the electoral prince, sfreWd too, quiet,
selfish, not ill-humored, and generally
silent, except when goaded into fury by
the intolerable tongue of his lovely wife;
there is poor Sophia Dorothea, With her
cOquetry and her wrongs, and her pas
sionate attachment to her scamp of q
lover, and her wild imprudences, and
her mad articles, and her insane fidelity,
and her furious jealouy regarding her
husband Though she lOathed and cheat
ed him, and her prodigious falsehoods;
and the confidante, OF course, into whose
hands the letters are slipped; and there
is Lothario, finally, than whom, as l
have said, one can't imagine Il more
handsome, wicked, worthless reprobate.
How that perverse fidelity of passion
pursues the william! How madly true
the woman is, and how astoundingly she
lies! She has beWitched two or three
persons who have taken her up, and they
won't believe in her wrong, Like Mary
Of Scotland, she finds adherents ready
to conspire for her even in history and
people who have to deal with her are
charmed, and fascinated, and bedeviled.
oWdevotedly Miss Strickland hasstood
by Mary's innocence Are there not
scores OF ladies i'll this audience who per-
sisted in declaring Caroline OF Brunswick
was a nlartyred angel. So was Helen of
Greece innocent. She never ran away
With Paris, the dangerous yoang Trojan.
MeHelaii5 her husband itts1.sa<i s.. and
there never was any siegeof Troy at all.
So was Bluebeard's wife innocent, She
never peeped into the closet where the
other wives were with their heads cut
off. She never dropped the key, or stain
ed it With blood; and her brothers were
quite right in finishing Bluebeard, the
cowardly brute. Yes, Caroline of Bruins
wick was innocent ;and Madam Laffarge
never poisoned herhuSband; and Mary Of
Scotland never blew UP hers; and poor
Sophia Dorothea was never untaithful
and Eve never took tile applet was q
cowardly fabrication Of The serpent.
George Louis has been held up to exc
Grafton as q murderous Bluebeard, where
no
transaction in which Philip of konigs-
marcl1 was scuffled out o. this mortal
scene. The prince was absent when the
catastrophe came. The princess had had
a hundred warnings; mild hints from
her husbands parents grim femon-
strances from himself-but took no more
heed Of this advice than such besotted
poor Wretches do. On the night Of Sun
day, the LIST OF July, 1914, Konigsmarci>
paid q long visit to The princess, and left
her to get ready for fight. Her husband
was away at Berlin; her carriages and
horses We're prepared and ready for the
elopenent. Meanwhile the spies OF
Countess Platen had brought the news
to their mistress. She went to Ernest
Augustus, and produced from the Elector
an order for the arrest of the oWede. On
the way by which he was to come, four
guards were commissioned to take him.
He strove to cut his way through the
four men, and wounded more than one
Of them. They fell upon him. cut him
down and, as he was lying wounded
on the ground, the countess, his enemy,
whom he had betrayed and insulted,
came out and beheld him PROSTATE. He
cursed her with his dying lips, and the
furious woman stamped upon his mouth
with her heel. He was dispatched pre-
sently; his body burned the next day !;
and all traces of the man disappeared.
The guards who killed him We're enjoin-
ed silence under severe penalties. The
princess was reported to be ill in her
apartments, from which she was taken
in October of the same year, being then
eight-and-twenty years old, and con-
signed to the castle of Ahlden, where
she remained a prisoner for no less than
thirty-two years. A separation had
been pronounced previously between her
and her husband. She was called hence
forth the s'Princess Of Ahlden," and her
husband no more uttered her name.
Four years after the Konigsmarck
catastrophe Ernest Augustus, the first
elector of Hanover, died, and George
Louis, his son, reigned in his stead