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through such a marriage, have found friends at court to support her own and her sister's claim to the provisional occupation, at least, of the family property. But Count Löwenhaupt, according to the fashion of the day, had deserted his native land to seek increase of fortune and professional advancement in foreign service. He first entered the Emperor's, and made several campaigns with the imperial armies in Hungary; then, either from some unexplained cause of dissatisfaction, or from the restlessness that seems proper to these unpatriotic knights-errant, he exchanged the imperial for the Dutch service, and again the Dutch for the Saxon. In this last Löwenhaupt remained for several years, although during some of those years Augustus, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, was, as the ally of Czar Peter, at war with Charles XII. of Sweden; and our Count and Countess appear to have thought it a most atrocious piece of cruelty and tyranny that the said Count was prosecuted in Sweden as a traitor, in arms against his country. Equivocations, to our apprehension, the most childish and unintelligible, are adduced in their letters to prove that he, an officer in the enemy's service, consuming his fortune in speculatively raising and training a regiment for that service, never actually bore arms against Sweden. Had we been so unfortunate as to be that wife, or son, or brother to Löwenhaupt, we should have deemed it a very merciful interposition of Providence that removed him from the world, a victim to grief, anxiety, and mortification, before the termination of his trial at Stockholm, whither his Countess had gone to move heaven and earth in his favour. It does not appear in the letters what legal measures ensued upon his death; but they must have been lenient, since we afterwards find the widow residing upon the Löwenhaupt estate. Before leaving this branch of the Königsmark family, we must observe that we here meet with a redeeming feature in the domestic affections. The Count and Countess Löwenhaupt seem to have been faithfully and fondly attached to each other, and to their children. But is it not characteristic of the age that in the confidential correspondence of this worthy couple, we should find not only no idea of public principle, but not a word intimating either suspicion of her sister's illicit connexion with the Elector, or anger at, and disbelief of, the public gossip respecting it, whilst her favour and court influence seem tacitly recognised?

We now come to the extraordinarily beautiful and accomplished Countess Aurora herself. She has usually been represented as having accompanied her sister to Dresden, when little more than a child, as such having fallen a victim to the seductive arts of the libertine Elector, become the mother of Maurice, the celebrated

French General, the Maréchal de Saxe, and been deserted; and having dedicated the remainder of her life to the cultivation of the Muses in a convent. The Editor of these family papers and memoirs, whilst professing himself an admirer of Aurora, refutes much of those apologies for her frailty. He proves that at the period of Königsmark's disappearance she was five and twenty, had already been surrounded by numbers of lovers, honourable and dishonourable, equals and superiors, whom she had, at least coquettishly, encouraged; and that she repaired alone to Dresden, for the just and reasonable purpose of soliciting the Elector to interfere in behalf of her brother, who was, it must be remembered, at the moment of his disappearance, a Saxon general, and whom she firmly believed to be alive in a Hanoverian prison. The inquiries of the Elector into the fate of his own officer were civilly eluded at Hanover, and do not appear to have been urged with the warmth that might have been anticipated from the suit he was even then pressing to the affectionate sister. The success of this guilty suit is proved by the existence of the Maréchal de Saxe, called in his youth the Count of Saxony; and with his birth the Elector's passion for the lovely mother died away. Countess Aurora did not hereupon exactly retire to a convent, in the usual acceptation of the phrase, or after the fashion of Madame de la Vallière, but she sought to secure the future post of Abbess of Quedlinburg, by obtaining that of coadjutrix in the princely abbey, which, since it had become a Protestant establishment, imposed no severe restrictions upon its nominally cloistered inmates. The history of this abbey is so remarkable both in itself and as illustrative of the changes and corruptions-or reforms, the reader pleases so to call them-of the original feudalism of the empire, that we cannot refrain from refreshing our own mind, and relieving our picture of vice, by a sketch of its foundation and vicissitudes.

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Upon a hill commanding the town of Quedlinburg, stood a castle of the old Dukes of Saxony, often inhabited by Henry the Fowler, the first and the greatest of the Saxon Emperors, even after his election to the sovereignty, and given by him at his death, with its domains, to his widow, the subsequently canonized Matilda. In the church of Quedlinburg Henry was interred; and adjoining to it Matilda founded the abbey, with which she connected schools for both sexes. She endowed the abbey with most of her possessions; and, assisted by her son, Otho the Great, she obtained for it privileges, ecclesiastical and temporal, unexampled, we believe, in the history of nunneries. Ecclesiastically, the Abbess of Quedlinburg was exempt from the jurisdiction of her diocesan, the Bishop of Halberstadt, and subject to no

superior save the Pope, whilst several cloisters of monks as well as of nuns were placed under her spiritual government. In her political relations, the Abbess of Quedlinburg was a Princess of the empire, entitled to a seat in the college of Princes, and a vote at the Diets. The town of Quedlinburg, with others of inferior note and extensive domains, were the property of the abbey, which numbered Saxon nobles of higher as well as of lower grade amongst its vassals and its honorary officers. The Dukes of Saxony enjoyed the high office of its hereditary Protector (Schirmvogt).

A daughter of Henry's and Matilda's appears to have been the first abbess, and for a considerable time her successors were princesses; at a later period the daughters of counts of the empire attained to the envied dignity. But, whatever their birth, these ecclesiastical princesses appear, almost without exception, to have exercised their high functions wisely and holily. The abbesses by their prudence, if they could not quite save their subjects from the calamities resulting from the wars which so frequently desolated Germany, at least reduced those calamities to the level of the most favoured district. The Quedlinburg domains suffered less than those of most other princes, and flourished accordingly. The town of Quedlinburg, if it did not rise quite to an equality in opulence, privileges, and importance with the republican free imperial cities, was yet allowed by the sovereign abbesses to enjoy a great degree of self-government, whilst it acquired wealth both by trade and by the renown of its high schools, which were much frequented, and in which many distinguished men received their education. We feel tempted here to give another extract, as illustrative of a different state of manners, and of the religious opinions or at least sentiments of really devout persons, from the tenth to the thirteenth century inclusive, and probably even somewhat later:

"The bishops of Halberstadt were always engaged in disputes with the abbesses of Quedlinburg, respecting the spiritual independence of the latter, sanctioned by the Popes. The bishops claimed spiritual jurisdiction over the abbey, in virtue of the natural subjection of women to men ; of ancient custom, which included the whole Harzgau (in which stood Quedlinburg) in the diocese of Halberstadt; and they further endeavoured to found a plea upon arbitrary ancient usages. The celebration of Palm Sunday, professedly intended for the edification of the pious, but in fact a scandal to them, was an annually recurring cause of dissension.

"From the Gospel assigned to that Sunday, was borrowed the pattern of a procession which was conducted from Halberstadt to Quedlinburg. The bishop, representing the Redeemer, riding upon an ass, under the

shade of palm branches,* surrounded by his clergy, and followed by a numerous train, arrived at and entered the abbey church, amidst the ringing of bells and shouts of Hosannah ! After high mass he caused the abbey relics to be exhibited; and, with all his attendants and followers, was abundantly feasted throughout the day. The multitudes who flocked thither to banquet gratis, for a whole day long, increased every year, occasioning inconveniences and annoyances, of which the intemperance of the banqueters was not the least. Even in early times Otho III. had recommended the abandonment of this custom. In 1259 the abbess offered to purchase an exemption from the Palm Sunday celebration with 200 marks of silver; this the bishop refused, but he assigned certain tithes to the abbey in order to defray the cost.

"These disputes were repeatedly referred to Rome, and the Popes always decided against the pretensions of the diocesans, prohibiting the ass procession. But in vain. The utmost that could be accomplished was the restriction of the number of horses brought from Halberstadt to Quedlinburg, upon these occasions, to sixty. It was only the progress of the public mind that at length put an end to this blasphemous festival, represented by ecclesiastics as an act of, and incentive to, devotion."

As feudalism declined, so did the splendour, power, and dignity of the ecclesiastical princesses of Quedlinburg, whose lives were long absorbed by incessant struggles in defence of their rights and privileges, against diocesans, hereditary protectors, and the Quedlinburg municipality. Towards the middle of the sixteenth century, the abbess, Countess Anne of Stolberg, embraced Lutheranism, which she established in her abbey and its domains, forfeiting thereby some of her lofty privileges and jurisdiction, but obtaining in exchange, for herself and her community, emancipation from claustral seclusion and from the perpetuity of their vows; the sisters being thenceforward free to resign the advantages of their situations, quit the abbey, and marry.

The decline of this once princely establishment now proceeded rapidly. The abbess was reduced to a fraction of a vote at the Diet, her feudal sovereignty became merely nominal, and the dependence of the town of Quedlinburg was rather upon the abbey expenditure than upon the will and authority of the abbess. The community, never large, decreased in numbers, till it consisted merely of the abbess herself, with sometimes a coadjutrix, her designated successor, a prioress, a deaconess, and one single canoness. We should say that this Lutheran nunnery_was heavily plundered by the Lutheran Swedish leader, Count John Christopher Königsmark; in fact Quedlinburg and its domains never suffered so much as during the thirty years' war.

The community of Quedlinburg was in the sunken condition

Query, whether the palm branches were not likewise represented by lowlier plants?

just described, when the fair, frail, and forsaken Maria Aurora of Königsmark sought the appointment of coadjutrix to the abbess, Anna Dorothea, a Princess of Saxe-Weimar. The abbess appears to have been willing to oblige the Electoral hereditary protector of Quedlinburg, by receiving as her heir-apparent his discarded favourite; but the deaconess and the single canoness, two sister Countesses of Stolberg, were inveterately opposed to her pretensions. And it is not the least remarkable feature of this age, that two ladies so actively and fiercely inimical to Countess Aurora never urged her misconduct, as a fault that ought to preclude her aspiring to the sovereignty of a community, which appears to have been appropriated exclusively to virgins, admitting neither wives nor widows. It is impossible to conceive that no whisper had circulated to her discredit, though we do not readily appreciate the degree of mystery or publicity that attached to her lapse from virtue, which at one time wears the guise of a profound secret, and at another, without any appearance of discovery or disclosure, seems generally known.

Count Maurice was born during Countess Aurora's absence from Dresden, professedly upon a canvassing visit to Quedlinburg. His birth and christening by the single name of Maurice are registered at Goslar as occurring Oct. 28, 1696, and he is called in the register the son of a great lady in the house of R. H. C. Winkel, without any name of father or mother. Among the letters here published, is one from Countess Aurora to her brother-in-law, like most of the others, in execrable French,* dated October 29, the day after the birth, very playful, and relating chiefly to the engaging of actors for the Elector's theatre. In the Löwenhaupt correspondence there are letters dated immediately before and immediately after this 28th of October, in which the Countess, who was then residing in her sister's house at Dresden, mentions her expectation of Aurora's arrival on that day, or on the subsequent day, and her disappointment at Aurora's repeated delays, but never hints at their cause. Neither is there in the published letters, nor, as Dr. Cramer assures us, in the unpublished, any mention of the child, although the Countess Löwenhaupt spent many months with Countess Aurora, and was visited by her husband at a Silesian estate which the latter bad purchased, and where Maurice dwelt with his governor, preceptor, and a whole educational establishment,-until very

* For our comfort Dr. Cramer generally gives us a German version, but tells us that almost all the originals are in French, especially the whole correspondence between Count and Countess Löwenhaupt. One might suppose that they adopted this foreign language as a security against the opening of their letters at German post-offices, only that we find, when they wished to keep any particular secret safe, they wrote a few lines in their mother tongue, i. e. Swedish.

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