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Chap. XXV.
HISTORIC PORTRAIT GALLERY.
389
that her very joyousness of disposition, her very love of
fun and thoughtlessness, would prove her ruin in the
corrupt court into which she was thrown at the early
age of fifteen. More Englishwomen lose their
reputation on the Continent by actions proceeding from the
liberty they enjoy in their own native country than
from any real guilt.
With Caroline Matilda and her mad spouse
Christian VII.* terminates our series of portraits of the royal
family of England.
I do not think we have yet alluded to Sophia Amelia,
the imperious consort of Frederic III., a Brunswicker by
birth, and aunt, if I recollect right, to our own
sovereign George I. of England; here she stands, painted
by Abraham Wuchter, in a scarlet dress, fan in hand,
as though dictating and laying down the law to
somebody; she liked herself to be called “the beautiful
Queen of Denmark ” in foreign parts ; she is tall and
fair, but a wishy-washy sort of woman, and
highshouldered ; and from her the present royal family of
Denmark inherit the projecting chin and under jaw
which characterise the house of Oldenborg. She was,
however, a woman of great courage, and during the
siege of Copenhagen she rode together with her
husband, armed as a man, the bullets whistling around her
head: her gun and sword are still shown in Rosenborg, f
With all her masculine courage she was at heart a
* When Christian VII. was in London the Duke of
Northumberland invited him to his country house (Sion, I suppose, not Alnwick),
and caused the whole of the road to be lighted with coloured lamps.
He became also a goldsmith, as well as a Doctor, in Oxford.
t The best portrait of Frederic extant is by Carl van Mander,
engraved by Haelwech.
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