MT. 35.] AND THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 159 



" It may be known to your Eoyal Highness, that 

 during the continuance of the restrictions upon your 

 royal authority I still was inclined to delay taking 

 this step, in the hope that I might owe the redress I 

 sought to your gracious and unsolicited condescension. 

 I have waited in the fond indulgence of this expec- 

 tation, until, to my inexpressible mortification, I find 

 that my unwillingness to complain has only produced 

 fresh grounds of complaint ; and I am at length com- 

 pelled either to abandon all regard to the two dearest 

 objects which I possess on earth mine own honour 

 and my beloved child or to throw myself at the feet 

 of your Eoyal Highness, the natural protector of both. 



" I presume, Sir, to represent to your Eoyal High- 

 ness, that the separation, which every succeeding 

 month is making wider, of the mother and the daugh- 

 ter, is equally injurious to my character and to her 

 education. I say nothing of the deep wound which 

 so cruel an arrangement inflicts upon my feelings, 

 although I would fain hope that few persons will be 

 found of a disposition to think lightly of this. To see 

 myself cut off from one of the very few domestic en- 

 joyments left me certainly the only one upon which 

 I set any value, the society of my child involves me 

 in such misery as I well know your Eoyal Highness 

 never could inflict upon me if you were aware of its 

 bitterness. Our intercourse has been gradually dimin- 

 ished ; a single interview weekly seemed sufficiently 

 hard allowance for a mother's affections : that, how- 

 ever, was reduced to our meeting once a-fortnight; and 

 I now learn that even this most rigorous interdiction 

 is to be still more rigidly enforced. But while I do 

 not venture to intrude my feeings as a mother upon 



