That pair in Eden ne’er reposed
Where groves more lovely grew;
Those groves in Eden ne’er enclosed
A lovelier pair than you.
Which somehow reminds one of the verses of Mr. Feeder, B.A., in “Dombey and Son.”
Walpole made the following amusing remark upon it:—“I believe the Princess will have more beauties bestowed upon her by the occasional poets than even a painter would afford her. They will cook up a new Pandora, and in the bottom of the box enclose Hope—that all they have said is true. A great many, out of excess of good breeding, who have heard that it was rude to talk Latin before women, proposed complimenting her in English; which she will be much the better for.[34] I doubt most of them instead of fearing their compositions should not be understood, should fear they should; they wish they don’t know what, to be read by they don’t know who.”
The next day after the landing of the Princess Augusta came the Prince, and the meeting must have been an exceedingly interesting one to those about them, especially to the populace who loved them both for their amiability, and who cheered themselves hoarse in consequence whenever they caught sight of the pair.
It is said that the Prince was very pleased with her, as indeed he might well have been, for there is no doubt that she was a very charming young girl, and what man—especially one of the Prince’s temperament—would not have been pleased under the circumstances?
But after his impassioned appeal to Baron Borck, which occurred only a few days before, it is impossible to believe that this child from abroad—who by the bye brought a doll with her, poor dear—could have effaced from Frederick’s heart the passion for his cousin Wilhelmina, which had burned there for so many years, almost from his childhood.
And now the hour had come when she was to lose him for ever; perhaps there were some tears shed in the private chamber of Wilhelmina in far-away Berlin, for what girl likes to lose a devoted lover?