The northern courts Author:John Brown Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP. II. Frederick the Fifth.—His Character.—The Cause of his Intemperance.—Character and Anecdotes of Juliana Maria.—Anecdotes of Christian the Seventh... more », when Crown Prince. Frederick the Fifth, the father of our present monarch (Christian the Seventh) was a wise, magnificent, liberal prince; the patron of men of genius, science, and learning, and the idol of a grateful people. Suddenly, a marked change took place in his habits and his manners: he lost all relish for those exalted pursuits to which he had been attached, and gave himself up to excessive and continual inebriety, whereby he impaired his faculties, physical and mental, and shortened his days. Whilst the memory of this solitary vice, that sullied his character, is generally known, the secret and powerful cause that led to this melancholy alteration, (except to a few, who, during the life-time of his second queen, dared not give it utterance: and most of whom have since descended to the grave), has remained buried in oblivion. This accomplished monarch had two consorts; the first, anddeservedly the best beloved, was the English princess Louisa, daughter of George the Second, by whom he had the wretched and imbecile prince who yet bears the title of king of Denmark; and Sophia Magdalena, married to Gustavus the Third of Sweden, who fell by the hand of Ankarstrom: for his second wife, our favorite monarch, in an evil hour, took Juliana Maria, daughter of Ferdinand Albert, duke of Brunswick Wolfen- buttle ; an unhappy choice that was the source of many and heavy domestic calamities. - Bad passions will obtrude into palaces as well as cottages, and when they chance to obtain full possession of a queen, they are likely to hurry her to acts more atrocious than a female of humble rank, because her power to commit...« less