Same Friday, 12th June, 1733, at a more advanced hour, the Wedding itself took effect; Wedding which, in spite of the mad rumors and whispers, in the Newspapers, Diplomatic Despatches and elsewhere, went off, in all respects, precisely as other weddings do; a quite human Wedding now and afterwards. Officiating Clergyman was the Reverend Herr Mosheim: readers know with approval the
TO PRINCESS WILHELMINA OF BAIREUTH, AT BERLIN.
"SALZDAHLUM, Noon, 19th June, 1733.
"MY DEAR SISTER,--A minute since, the whole Ceremony was got finished; and God be praised it is over! I hope you will take it as a mark of my friendship that I give you the first news of it.
"I hope I shall have the honor to see you again soon; and to assure you, my dear Sister, that I am wholly yours (TOUT A VOUS). I write in great haste; and add nothing that is merely formal. Adieu. [
One Keyserling, the Prince's favorite gentleman, came over express, with this Letter and the more private news; Wilhelmina being full of anxieties. Keyserling said, The Prince was inwardly "well content with his lot; though he had kept up the old farce to the last; and pretended to be in frightful humor, on the very morning; bursting out upon his valets in the King's presence, who reproved him, and looked rather pensive,"--recognizing, one hopes, what a sacrifice it was. The Queen's Majesty, Keyserling reported, "was charmed with the style and ways of the Brunswick Court; but could not endure the Princess-Royal [new Wife], and treated the two Duchesses like dogs (COMME DES CHIENS)." [Wilhelmina, ii. 114.] Reverend Abbot Mosheim (such his title; Head Churchman, theological chief of Helmstadt University in those parts, with a couple of extinct little ABBACIES near by, to help his stipend) preached next Sunday, "On the Marriage of the Righteous,"-- felicitous appropriate Sermon, said a grateful public; [Text, Psalm, xcli. 12; "Sermon printed in Mosheim's
On Tuesday, both the Majesties set out towards Potsdam again; "where his Majesty," having business waiting, "arrived some time before the Queen." Thither also, before the week ends, Crown- Prince Friedrich with his Bride, and all the Serenities of Brunswick escorting, are upon the road,--duly detained by complimentary harangues, tedious scenic evolutions at Magdeburg and the intervening Towns;--grand entrance of the Princess-Royal into Berlin is not till the 27th, last day of the week following. That was such a day as Wilhelmina never saw; no sleep the night before; no breakfast can one taste: between Charlottenburg and Berlin, there is a review of unexampled splendor; "above eighty oarriages of us," and only a tent or two against the flaming June sun: think of it! Review begins at four a.m.;--poor Wilhelmina thought she would verily have died, of heat and thirst and hunger, in the crowded tent, under the flaming June sun; before the Review could end itself, and march into Berlin, trumpeting and salvoing, with the Princess-Royal at the head of it. [Wilhelmina, ii. 127-129.]
Of which grand flaming day, and of the unexampled balls and effulgent festivities that followed, "all Berlin ruining itself in dresses and equipages," we will say nothing farther; but give only, what may still have some significance for readers, Wilhelmina's Portrait of the Princess-Royal on their first meeting, which had taken place at Potsdam two days before. The Princess-Royal had arrived at Potsdam too, on that occasion, across a grand Review; Majesty himself riding out, Majesty and Crown-Prince, who had preceded her a little, to usher in the poor young creature;--Thursday, June 25th, 1733:--
(Editor：science)