“I am sensible how difficult it really is to be impartial, and how much more difficult it is to seem so, in drawing the characters of persons of the highest path and rank. The praise or the blame which they may justly deserve, is severally ascribed to the interested views or the private resentment of the author. I should therefore not have attempted the character of this most excellent Princess, could there have been the least room for suspicions of that nature. But having no obligation or disobligation whatsoever to her, I shall speak the truth in the sincerity of my heart, and I likewise call upon all and everyone of those who have the honour to know her as well as I do, to contradict me if they can in any one particular. I have observed her with attention almost from the hour of her birth, and have carefully marked the progressive steps of nature. I have seen her in her most unguarded moments, and have seriously and critically considered whatever fell from her; so that I may, without vanity, assert that nobody is better qualified to tell the truth than myself, though others might be much more capable of adorning it.
“I shall say nothing of the beauty of this incomparable Princess, it is her mind, and not her person, which we intend to delineate. Neither shall I dwell upon her high birth and station any longer than to observe that she seems to be the only person ignorant of that superiority. She has never been heard to give the most remote hint of it, much less has she ever been observed to assume even that degree of state which others, much inferior to her in birth, are so foolishly fond of.
“It would be saying but little in praise of this excellent lady to observe, that she had early acquired many friends; for who in that high station has not, where the power of obliging and doing good is so extensive, it must be the weakest head, as well as the worst heart, that does not exert it, and make many happy friends. But, what is much more rare in her station, she has not one enemy.
“Equally humane to all who approach her, she neither stoops to meannesses, nor insolently insults, in proportion as she imagines the persons may be useful or useless; for having nothing to fear, ask, or conceal, from any, she behaves herself with unconcern to all.
“She was never known to tell a lie, or even to disguise a truth; uncorrupted nature appears in every motion, and honestly declares the present sentiment. Her smiles are the immediate results of a contented and innocent heart. They are never prostituted to disguise inward rancour and malice, nor insidiously displayed to betray the unwary into a fatal confidence.
“The tears she sometimes sheds are not less sincere; they flow only from justifiable causes, and not from disappointed avarice, ambition or revenge. Nor are they the forced tears of simulated compassion, but real harshness of heart. Moreover she never cries for joy.
“She is a rare instance of liberality and economy; for though her income be but small, she retains no more of it than is absolutely necessary for her subsistence, and properly and privately disposes of the rest; free from the ostentation of little or sordid minds, who by profusion in trifles, hope to conceal the insatiate avarice and corruption of their hearts.
“Though born and bred in Court, she never engages in the intrigues and whispers of it, nor concerns herself in public matters. Far from retailing or inventing lies, promoting scandal and defamation, and encouraging breach of faith and violation of friendship, one would think of her behaviour that she had never heard of such things.
“Her silence, considering her sex, is not the least admirable of her many qualifications. She never speaks when she has nothing to say, nor graciously tires her company with frivolous, improper and unnecessary tattle.
“She is entirely free from another weakness of her sex, attention to dress. And it is observable, that if she is ever out of humour, it is in those moments when she is obliged to conform to custom in that particular.