Or does the reader notice Holstein-Beck, Prussian Major-General;Prince of Holstein-Beck; a solid dull man; capable of liquor, among other things: not wiser than he should be; sold all his Apanage or Princeship; for example, and bought plate with it, wherefore they call him ever since "Holstein-VAISSELLE (Holstein PLATE)" instead of Holstein-Beck. [Busching's Beitrage, iv. 109.] His next Brother, here likewise I should think, being Major-General in the Saxon service, is still more foolish. He, poor soul, is just about to marry the Orzelska;incomparable Princess known to us, who had been her Father's mistress:--marriage, as was natural, went asunder again (1733)after a couple of years.--But mark especially that middle-aged heavy gentleman, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, Prussian Commandant of Stettin. Not over rich (would not even be rich if he came to be reigning Duke, as he will do); attentive at his post in those parts, ever since the Siege-of-Stralsund time; has done his orders, fortified Stettin to perfection; solid, heavy taciturn man:--of whom there is nothing notable but this only, That last year his Wife brought him a little Daughter, Catharine the name of her. His Wife is a foolish restless dame, highborn and penniless;let her nurse well this little Catharine: little Catharine will become abundantly distinguished in a thirty years hence;Empress of all the Russias that little girl; the Fates have so appointed it, mocking the prophecies of men! Here too is our poor unmentionable Duke of Mecklenburg: poor soul, he has left his quarrels with the Ritterschaft for a week or two, and is here breathing the air of the Elbe Heaths. His wild Russian Wife, wild Peter's niece and more, we are relieved to know is dead; for her ways and Peter's have been very strange! To this unmentionable Duke of Mecklenburg she has left one Daughter, a Princess Elizabeth-Catherine, who will be called Princess ANNE, one day:
whose fortunes in the world may turn out to be tragical.
Potential heiress of all the Russias, that little Elizabeth or Anne. Heiress by her wily aunt, Anne of Courland,--Anne with the swollen cheek, whom Moritz, capable of many things, and of being MARECHAL DE SAXE by and by, could not manage to fall in love with there; and who has now just quitted Courland, and become Czarina:
[Peter II., her Cousin-german, died January, 1730 (Mannstein's Russia ).]--if Aunt Anne with the big cheek should die childless, as is likely, this little Niece were Heiress. WAS THUT'S, What matter!--In the train of King August are likewise splendors of a sort, if we had time for them. Dukes of Sachsen-Gotha, Dukes of Meiningen, most of the Dukes that put Sachsen to their name;--Sachsen-Weimar for one; who is Grandfather of Goethe's Friend, if not otherwise distinguished. The Lubomirskis, Czartoryskis, and others of Polish breed, shall be considered as foreign to us, and go unnoticed.
Nor are high Dames wanting, as we see: vast flights of airy bright-hued womankind, Crown-Princess at the head of them, who lodges in Tiefenau with her Crown-Prince,--and though plain-looking, and not of the sweetest temper, is a very high Lady indeed. Niece of the present Kaiser Karl, Daughter of the late Kaiser, Joseph of blessed memory;--for which reason August never yet will sign the Pragmatic Sanction, his Crown-Prince having hereby rights of his own in opposition thereto. She is young;to her is Tiefenau, northward, on the edge of the Gorisch Heath, probably the choicest mansion in these circuits, given up:
also she is Lady of "the Bucentaur," frigate equal to Cleopatra's galley in a manner; and commands, so to speak, by land and water.
Supreme Lady, she, of this sublime world-foolery regardless of expense: so has the gallantry of August ordered it. Our Friedrich and she will meet again, on occasions not like this!--What the other Princesses and Countesses, present on this occasion, were to Crown-Prince Friedrich, except a general flower-bed of human nature,--ask not; nor even whether the Orzelska was so much as here! The Orzelska will be married, some two months hence, [10th August, 1730 (Sir T. Robinson: Despatch from Dresden;in State-Paper Office).] to a Holstein-Beck; not to Holstein PLATE, but to his Brother the unfortunate Saxon Major-General:
a man surely not of nice tastes in regard to marriage;--and Iwould recommend him to keep his light Wife at home on such occasions. They parted, as we said, in a year or two, mutually indignant; and the Orzelska went to Avignon, to Venice and else-whither, and settled into Catholic devotion in cheap countries of agreeable climate. [See Pollnitz ( Memoirs, &c.), whoever is curious about her.]
Crown-Prince Friedrich, doubtless, looking at this flower-bed of human nature, and the reward of happy daring paid by Beauty, has vivid images of Princess Amelia and her Vice-regency of Hanover;bright Princess and Vice-regency, divided from him by bottomless gulfs, which need such a swim as that of Leander across the material Hellespont was but a trifle to!--In which of the villages Hotham and Dickens lodged, I did not learn or inquire; nor are their copious Despatches, chronicling these sublime phenomena from day to day for behoof of St. James's, other than entirely inane to us at this time. But one thing we do learn from them:
Our Crown-Prince, escaping the paternal vigilance, was secretly in consultation with Dickens, or with Hotham through Dickens;and this in the most tragic humor on his side. In such effulgences of luxury and scenic grandeur, how sad an attendant is Black Care,--nay foul misusage, not to be borne by human nature!
