self was appointed to act as his compan- | told upon him mightily. However, in the ion whilst viewing the sights of London. An interruption of a few days had taken place, during which, at Queen Victoria's invitation, he had visited Windsor Castle. The delight produced upon his mind was exquisite, transcendent; he roamed about with ever-increasing zest among the vestiges of centuries left on that most fascinating spot; its grandeur and stateliness midst of his unrestrained expressions of admiration he suddenly turned to his companion, and asked him whether he had ever seen Babelsberg. "No? Then you should see it as soon as possible; for it is so much finer than Windsor." Those words will never be forgotten by him to whom they were addressed; for surely a youth can not go far wrong who prefers his abode ENTRANCE OF THE CROWN PRINCE INTO JERUSALEM.-[SEE PAGE 372.] From the painting by W. Gentz, photographed by the Photographische Gesellschaft, Berlin. and his own little snuggery to all the finest splendors wherever found; nor is it possible that the home in which such a sentiment has grown to maturity should not be pure, and filled with noble and high purposes. Such, indeed, was the case. Everybody knows the father's career, which to-day already stamps him with a legendary type like his predecessor Charlemagne. The mother is far less known out of her country. Yet she deserves to be; for, indeed, more labor, conscientiously and right heroically undertaken, has rarely been concentrated into one life. In Augusta of Saxe-Weimar, the pupil of Goethe and the friend of Alexander von Humboldt, beauty and talents, tastes and longings, rank and position, have all and ever been counted as dust in the balance when compared to the regal duty of filling the post to which Providence had called her. No second of each waking hour is allowed to pass without a straining of every nerve in the fulfillment of such tasks as her everactive brain suggests, all tending to the one object of her life, viz., to increase the patrimony of respect and loyalty which has been accumulating in favor of the family into which her destiny has thrown her. Great was the care she bestowed upon choosing governesses and masters for her son's earliest years. In obedience to a family tradition the boy was also early set to do handiwork. He chose carpentering and book-binding, and went through a regular course of each under professional teachers. His schooling was finally intrusted to Ernst Curtius, a native of that famous ancient republic of Lübeck, and well known to our readers as the historian of Greece. The mother's attention had been first drawn toward him by a public lecture he gave treating of the Acropolis of Athens. There was something about him that fixed her attention. In him the Athenian mind seemed, as it were, to be reproduced. Imbued with an exquisite sense of the beautiful, he treats of the fine arts, of history, and mythology, even of grammar or topography, with a bewitching elegance. His influence, paramount at the present day in the Berlin University, is visible in many traits of character of his high-born pupil, which made the latter, at the age of twenty, what a shy old gentleman at Bonn once called in private conversation, "the delight of mankind." From Curtius's hands the Prince, in obedience to another tradition of his family, entered the First Regiment of Foot-Guards, stationed at Potsdam. His indefatigable instructor, Major Von der Groeben, exempted him from no duty that any other er-in-chief of the guards, who was respon- | ticles, disjointed from time immemorial, sible for the work done. The choice of Bonn for his life at college was an excellent one. A future sovereign ought, it is believed, to become intimate with every portion of the country. One of the most interesting provinces of had been firmly welded. As his parents chose Coblenz for their own residence, making that town for the time a sort of second capital of the kingdom, so was he brought up in the Rhenish university. There he lived, a merry youth with the young, and a genial, instruction-seeking | The present writer recollects his address student with the old. If his arrival had been looked upon with some mistrust or dislike by the common people, to whom the name of Prussian was still a rebuke, he quickly vanquished that estrangement without any artifice of kingcraft beyond that of having an honest, civil word for everybody and-remembering everybody. ing an urchin who suddenly emerged from a side lane with, "How now, boy? Surely you had not your arm in a sling when I saw you last?" The lad stared and then grinned, blubbered something about having had a fall on the ice and mother insisting upon his arm being tied up, as if that was any use, and ran away, glancing back from time to time at the young gentleman who had actually recognized him-the little Christopher whom nobody cared about. don print-sellers. Just before the Princess of Prussia appeared he had been looking at the famous picture of Waterloo with the farm-house of La Belle Alliance in the middle, from which farm-house, as is well known, the Prussians have affectionately named the historic battle. He observed various portraits of the Princess Royal and of Prince Frederic William lying about the room. Placing then with some precipitation one of each over the large engraving of the battle, he quitted the table to bow to the august personage on her entrance. His movement had, however, been observed. The Princess, advancing to the table, perceived the two bonny youthful countenances smiling at her from out of the engravings, and underneath nothing but just these momentous words, La Belle Alliance. A rapid glance was exchanged, but nothing said. This little scene remains, I think, typical to the present day. For the purpose which these two true-hearted and experienced persons had striven perseveringly for, viz., a solid understanding among cognate races-peace and good-will between England and Germany, and that good-will sealed and cemented by every token of brotherhood capable of enhancing sentiment and of preparing a better future-that purpose must continue to hold a high place in the feelings and, I would venture to say, the duties, of statesmen of either nation as long as they exist. The visit to England to take part in the opening of the first International Exhibition of 1851, to which reference has been made once before, was not the only journey undertaken during the student life of 1850-2. Yet it remained the most important. He had occasion there to hear his own stern father expatiate, and merrily too, upon the evident possibility of assembling hundreds and thousands of people without any military precautions, with scarcely a policeman visible, and yet without disorder of any kind, the sole condition being that they should feel thoroughly contented. If my memory serves me right, the morning after that " Peace Festival" (as Queen Victoria aptly calls it) was the first known in London when no single case occupied the police courts. No accident had occurred among 700,000 persons assembled outside the exhibition building. The young Prince was struck with the loyalty of a free people. He observed with growing admiration the restless and unselfish industry of the Prince Consort. He felt attracted by the air of perfect domestic happiness pervading the heart and core and focus of the greatest empire the world has yet seen. It was then too that, standing before a picture of Titian, he observed to his companion: "Is there not a strong likeness between that saint to the left and the Princess Royal?" Perhaps this question was intended to convey the impression that he too, like so many others, had given a first and willing thought to the fitness of an alliance with the daughter of such a house. More probably it meant no more than the words implied; nor did, for several years to come, any utterances from either country break the silence. The very first word—and not even a word but a suggestion only-upon that wish of many hearts was shaped, and in a manner which reminds one of last century esprit, by the Prussian envoy, my father, in 1852, during a visit to London of the It was said in those days-with what jusPrince's mother, now Empress of Ger- tice I know not-that the Emperor Nichomany. This journey had been undertaken las of Russia thought himself somewhat to see her aged aunt, Adelaide, Dowager slighted by the heir-apparent of Prussia Queen of England. On the last morning having made his first public appearance of her stay the table in her anteroom, in in London. "I fancied somehow that St. which the minister was awaiting her lei- Petersburg was the place where scions of sure, had been filled to overflowing with that house showed themselves first on ensplendid engravings sent by various Lon-tering the world." However that may be, VOL. LXVII-No. 399,-23 The seeds then sown were allowed to ripen during a prolonged military service in Potsdam and in Breslau. "Never had I thought it possible to be so happy in my life as I am now," he said. He commanded battalions and regiments, and was initiated into the higher principles of tactics and strategy, and the history of war, to which a remarkable letter of Humboldt's dated August 30, 1853, had drawn the mother's special attention. His aide-de-camp at one time was a young captain who has since risen to eminence as a diplomatist, and is well known in America-Baron Schweinitz. |