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82 ELIZABETH, PRINCESS PAIiATIKE.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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-* Paet I. Among The Lively Pictures Whi...
sickness . He maintains that a calm and wholesome state of mind induces bodily health ; he even recognises in content of mind some
subtle power to render fortune herself more favourable , —a cheerful belief , which he supports from the authority of Socrates , and bases
on moral and psychological grounds . Everyday grievances are to be considered as household enemiesfrom whom we cannot part
, company , and niusfc therefore be all the more on our guard against . Our true safeguard against these troubles isthat we divert the
mind and imagination from dwelling upon them , , dealing with them through the understanding alone . Like most persons of an
imaginative temperament , the princess was prone to escape from the petty cares and trials of everyday life into the speculative and
transcendental . Against this last infirmity of noble minds Descartes sedulously sets himself . He gives a freer range to her
studies , warns her constantly from the shifting sands of metaphysics , directing her attention to the more practical departments of
philosophy , especially the natural sciences . Nor was he less a warm and faithful friend than a lofty teacher . Every fresh calamity
which befel her house wrings words of good cheer from him to the princess , who , if she could not always take comfort from the
philosophy , must have found some measure of it at least in the deep sympathy and earnest friendship of the philosopher .
Elizabeth ' s condition fully needed whatever soothing and abstracting influences are to be found in high pursuits . Born at
Heidelberg , December 26 th , 1618 , she was the eldest daughter of the Elector Frederick V . and his wifeElizabeth Stuartdaughter
of James I . of England . The misfortunes , of her famil , y commenced the October after her birthwhen the Electorurged by his
wife ' s ambition , left the Palatinate , to take possession , of the Bohemian throne . Most of our readers are familiar with the
history of the short-lived reign of the Winter King , as Frederick was called , because he only kept one Christmas in his capital . Frederick
had not a single quality by which he might have retained the crown he had graspedand speedily alienated the affections of his
, new subjects . Stunned by the single defeat sustained by his generals before Prague , he gave up Ms kingdom without further
resistance ; and , stripped of his hereditary States by a _SiDanish invasion , fled , a dishonoured and penniless exile , to hide his head
under the protection of the Dutch _reiDublic . The troubles of her house fell lightly on Elizabeth during her
childhood . She had , when her parents left Heidelberg for Bohemia , been consigned to the charge of her grandmother , Juliana , —a
princess distinguished in her day for superior talents and force of character-Under her care Elizabeth grew a studious , thoughtful child , shy
and reserved to strangers , but very sweet and frank in her manner to those she loveduntil her tenth yearwhen she joined her parents
at the Hague , and , found herself for the , first time among a large
family of younger brothers and sisters , on whom the queen seems
82 Elizabeth, Princess Paiiatike.
82 ELIZABETH , PRINCESS PAIiATIKE .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), April 1, 1862, page 82, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01041862/page/10/
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