AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT.

CHAPTER CXII-FIRST TWO HANOVERIANS.

Century the eighteenth witnessed in Europe a striking social and political transformation. A change like the shadow of a cloud swept over the face of society, and the landscape took another outline and It was the age in which the old style of kingship and statecraft gave place to new methods of administration. That great fact, the European King, at length bowed down to that greater fact, the European People. It is the province of the present Book to narrate the last epoch of the Ancient Regime, and to bring the reader up to the verge of that cataclysm which, in the closing years of the century, rent the earth and swallowed up the Past. Since Frederick II of Prussia was the last and one of the greatest of the old-style kings-by far the most conspicuous figure between the time of the Grand Monarch and the time of Washington and Bonaparte-it is appropriate that this, the nineteenth general division of the present Work, should be designated as the Age of Frederick the Great. As introductory to the more stirring parts of the drama, the present chapter may well be devoted to the reigns of the first two princes of the House of Hanover in England, and the following to the corresponding period in the history of France.

When it became evident that Anne Stuart, seventeen times a mother, was destined to die without an heir, the English Parliament made haste to reestablish the succession. After not a little discussion the choice of the body rested on the Electress Sophia, granddaughter of James I, married to the Duke of Brunswick. This settlement was accepted in Scotland in 1707, was ratified in the conventions with Holland in 1706 and 1709, and was finally guaranteed in the treaty of Utrecht in 1713. On the 28th of May, in the succeeding year, the Electress Sophia died, and Queen Anne lived until the 1st of August following. By these two events the way was cleared for the unchallenged accession of Prince George Lewis, eldest son of Sophia and Duke Ernest.

He on whom the crown of England was thus devolved was born at Osnabruck on the