wards Hanover again, hopeful of
a little hunting at the Gorhde; and intended seeing Osnabruck and his
Brother the Bishop there, as he passed. That day, 21st June, 1727, from
some feelings of his own, he was in great haste for Osnabruck; hurrying
along by extra-post, without real cause save hurry of mind. He had left
his poor old Maypole of a Mistress on the Dutch Frontier, that morning,
to follow at more leisure. He was struck by apoplexy on the road,--arm
fallen powerless, early in the day, head dim and heavy; obviously an
alarming case. But he refused to stop anywhere; refused any surgery but
such as could be done at once. "Osnabruck! Osnabruck!" he
reiterated, growing visibly worse. Two subaltern Hanover Officials,
"Privy-Councillor von Hardenberg, KAMMERHERR (Chamberlain) von Fabrice,
were in the carriage with him;" [Gottfried, _Historische Chronik_
(Frankfurt, 1759), iii. 872. Boyer, _The Political State of Great
Britain,_ vol. xxxiii. pp. 545, 546.] King chiefly dozing, and at last
supported in the arms of Fabrice, was heard murmuring, "C'EST FAIT DE
MOI ('T is all over with me)!" And "Osnabruck! Osnabruck!" slumberously
reiterated he: To Osnabruck, where my poor old Brother, Bishop as they
call him, once a little Boy that trotted at my knee with blithe face,
will have some human pity on me! So they rushed along all day, as at the
gallop, his few attendants and he; and when the shades of night fell,
and speech had now left the poor man, he still passionately gasped some
gurgle of a sound like "Osnabruck;"--hanging in the arms of Fabrice,
and now evidently in the article of death. What a gallop, sweeping
through the slumber of the world: To Osnabruck, Osnabruck!

In the hollow of the night (some say, one in the morning), they reach
Osnabruck. And the poor old Brother,--Ernst August, once youngest of six
brothers, of seven children, now the one survivor, has human pity in the
heart of him full surely. But George is dead; careless of it now.
[Coxe (i. 266) is "indebted to his friend Nathaniel Wraxall" for these
details,--the since famous Sir Nathaniel, in whose _Memoirs_ (vague, but
NOT mendacious, not unintelligent) they are now published more at large.
See his _Memoirs of the Courts of Berlin, Dresden,_ &c. (London. 1799),
i. 35-40; also _Historical Memoirs_ (London, 1836), iv. 516-518.] After
sixty-seven years of it, he has flung his big burdens,--English crowns,
Hanoverian crownlets, sulkinesses, indignations, lea