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Show HIS SCOTCH LASSIE. Another blow is about to be struck at the Royal Marriage act, if we may trust the rumors which reach us of the betrothal of Bruce Leopold, the youngest son of Queen Victoria, to the most brilliant beauty and greatest heiress of the current season in London, Miss Francee Evelyn Maynard, the oldest daughter of the late Hon. Charles Maynard, son and heir of the last Viscount Maynard, of Essex, who predeceased his father in January, 1865. Lord Maynard, as descendant of the great lawyer, died three months after his son when his titles became extinct and his great estate passed to his eldest grand daughter, the young lady who is now said to be engaged to Prince Leopold. Miss Maynard has just entered her 19th year and on her presentation at a recent drawing room held by the Queen, she seems to have taken London by storm not only by her extraordinary beauty but by a grace and stateliness which are not always the leading characteristics of British debutantes. The fashionable chroniclers went into ecstasies over the way in which she made her "curtsey to the Queen," an operation which is very apt to disconcert the most self possessed of young woman when it has to be performed in a robe with a sweeping train, and under the concentrated stare of a small regiment of her sister women. She is said also to be as accomplished and amiable as she is lovely and graceful, and as she comes into estates valued at [pound sign] 30,000 a year, the rents of which have been accumulating for her ever since her grandfather's death in 1863, it must be admitted that Queen Victoria might do worse for her only bachelor son than to provide him with such a bride. Miss Maynard's mother, who is a granddaughter of the Duke of Grafton of the time of Junius, married after Mr. Maynard's death the present Earl of Russiya, High Commissioner to the General Assembly of Scotland, who represented Queen Victoria at the first marriage of King Alfonso of Spain. This new allegiance with the aristocracy less than forty years after the House of Lords solemnly invalidated the marriage of the Duke of Sussex to Lady Augusta Murray, ought to make the bones of George III rattle in their vault. The Royal Marriage act, passed in 1772, is still the law of the land, however, and as Prince Leopold is now in his 27th year, he falls under the operation of the clause requiring the consent of Parliament to his nuptials. Fortunately for Miss Maynard, the Prince is reputed to be one of the most estimable and intelligent of his race, and fortunately for the taxpayers of England it will hardly be necessary to vote an income for his bride.-N. Y. World. |
