th, the "Tom of Ten Thousand," of every one, was betrothed to
Elizabeth, the child widow--she was only fifteen years old--of Lord
Ogle. Koenigsmark, fresh from love-making in {8} all the courts of
Europe, and from fighting anything and everything from the Turk at
Tangiers to the wild bulls of Madrid, seems to have fallen in love with
Thynne's betrothed wife, and to have thought that the best way of
obtaining her was to murder his rival. The murder was done, and its
story is recorded in clumsy bas-relief over Thynne's tomb in
Westminster Abbey. Koenigsmark's accomplices were executed, but
Koenigsmark got off, and died years later fighting for the Venetians at
the siege of classic Argos. The soldier in Virgil falls on a foreign
field, and, dying, remembers sweet Argos. The elder Koenigsmark, dying
before sweet Argos, ought of right to remember that spot where St.
Albans Street joins Pall Mall, and where Thynne was done to death. The
Koenigsmarks had a sister, the beautiful Aurora, who was mistress of
Frederick Augustus, Elector of Saxony, and so mother of the famous
Maurice de Saxe, and ancestress of George Sand. Later, like the fair
sinner of some tale of chivalry, she ended her days in pious
retirement, as prioress of the Protestant Abbey at Quedlinburg.

[Sidenote: 1714--Wooden shoes and warming-pans]

George was born in Osnabrueck, in May, 1660, and was therefore now in
his fifty-fifth year. As his first qualification for the government of
England, it may be mentioned that he did not understand one sentence of
the English language, was ignorant of English ways, history, and
traditions, and had as little sympathy with the growing sentiments of
the majority of educated English people as if he had been an Amurath
succeeding an Amurath.

When George became Elector, on the death of his father in 1698, he
showed, however, some capacity for improvement, under the influence of
the new responsibility imposed upon him by his station. His private
life did not amend, but his public conduct acquired a certain solidity
and consistency which was not to have been expected from his previous
mode of living. One of his merits was not likely to be by any means a
merit in the eyes of the English people. He was, to do him justice,
deeply attached to his native country. He had all the {9} love for
Hanover that the cat has for the hearth to which it is accustomed. The
ways of the place suited him; the climate, the soil, the wh