Note 12 — Chapter II · 1799-1801.

I extract from some observations by my Mother on the Princess of Bayreuth’s Memoirs, a later portrait, from recollection, of the Dowager Duchess. ‘The Duchess of Brunswick was one of the most accomplished and brilliant women of her time. To a late period of life, beyond her eightieth year, she possessed an incomparable understanding, and the most amiable cheerfulness. Time had respected not only her faculties, but her exterior; and while it had worn her form to a sort of etherial transparency, had left her perfect symmetry, lively eyes, and an expressive delicate countenance. She appeared like a model of agreeable old age turned in ivory, and was said to be a softened resemblance of Frederic the Great, whose agrémens of appearance and manner have been so well described by Mirabeau.’—Ed.