episode of the Prince’s life has borne ample fruit in the hey-dey of the German Empire, and he by whom the seed was sown has but seldom been remembered, or thanked for the good work he did then for his sovereign and for his country. There was no sovereign more constitutional than the King of Prussia at the beginning of his reign. He surrounded himself with enlightened and liberal-minded ministers, and never interfered with their work. Having been brought up to look upon his brother as a great genius, he was very humble about his own qualifications, and he even thought for a time of abdicating in favour of his son. This, however, would not have suited Bismarck’s hand. When the Prince of Prussia came to the throne, he stipulated one thing only with his ministers: they must give him a free hand to strengthen the army; for all the rest he would follow their advice. And so he did for several years. But when they failed to keep their promise, and to get Parliament to pass the necessary military budget, he parted with them and invited Bismarck to form a new ministry in 1862. This was the beginning of the political drama which ended at Sedan, if indeed it ended then. I had heard much from my friends Roggenbach, Schlœzer, and E. Curtius about the Princess of Prussia (afterwards the Queen of Prussia, and the first German Empress), and my expectations were not deceived when I was presented to her during her stay in England in the spring of 1851. She was _grand’ dame_, highly gifted, highly cultivated. She wanted to see everything and know everybody worth knowing in England. It was she who went to Eton to see a cricket match played. She had heard much about it, and was most anxious to watch it. After the game had been going on for a good quarter of an hour, she turned impatiently to the Provost, and asked: “When are the boys going to begin?” She had evidently expected some kind of fight or skirmish, and was rather disappointed at the quiet and business-like way in which the boys, who were on their best behaviour, threw the ball and hit it back. However, at that time everything English, even the games, was perfect in the eyes of the Germans, and nothing more perfect than the Princess Royal, when she had been won by the young Prince of Prussia in 1857. The Princess of Prussia never forgot people whom she had once taken an interest in, and I had several interesting interviews with her later on—at Coblentz in 1863, at Baden in 1872. I confess I was somewhat taken aback when, after dinner, the Empress took me by the hand, and stepped forward, addressing the whole company present, and giving the ladies and gentlemen a full account of what this Oxford professor had done for Germany during the Franco-German war by defending their cause in _The Times_. All I could reply was that I had done little enough, and that I could not help saying what I had said in _The Times_, and that I was proud of having been well abused for having spoken the truth.