Lives of the last four princesses of the royal house of Stuart

342 THE PEINCESS LOUISA MA.KY. [1706.
CHAPTER III.
The public promenade, was always one of the recreations
of the court of St. Germains, even in the sorrowful days
of King James II. ; but it became much more attractive,
after the decease of that unfortunate King, when his son
and daughter, with their youthful attendants and com-
panions, the children of the Jacobite aristocracy, English,
Scotch, and Irish, who had followed their majesties into
exile, grew up, and the vivacity of French habits and
associations, in some degree counterbalanced the depres-
sion caused by ruined prospects and penury.
The lively letters and doggrel lyrics of Count Anthony
Hamilton, the self-appointed and unsalaried poet-laureate
of the exiled Stuarts, at St. Germains, prove that after
time had a little assuaged the grief of the widowed Queen,
and her children, a good deal of frolic and fun, occasion-
ally went on in the old palace, and its purlieus.
In one of his letters to his friend the Duke of Berwick,
Count Hamilton says :* " The King, our young lord, in-
creases every day in wit, and the Princess, his sister,
becomes more and more charming. Heaven preserve her
being stolen from us, for her lady governess seems to have
no other fear than that. These two are always near their
* ' (Euvres de Count Hamilton.'