“In the case of the Weimar Princess, the daughter of Charles Augustus, whose friends were Schiller and Goethe, and the pupil of Alexander von Humboldt, the connection between these two factors is reversed. The splendour, to which her pride has always led her to aspire, has now fallen abundantly to her lot. When it is remembered that the magnificent coronation festivities, ten years ago at Königsberg and Berlin, were principally her work, (it is well known that she begged the Empress Eugénie to lend her her hairdresser for the occasion), she must be fully satisfied in that respect, since the imperial crown has been added to the royal diadem. But, in addition to this outward pomp, Augusta now wishes to enjoy the sense of real power. Indications of this tendency were evident so long ago as 1866, when Vogel von Falkenstein received orders from Berlin in a feminine hand to proceed with leniency in South Germany, and was suddenly removed from the command of the army on the Main, because his anger at this interference found expression in the words, ‘When petticoats are to the front, the devil take a Prussian general!’ In order not to sink into insignificance beside Bismarck, the Empress required a party, and she was obliged to take it wherever it was to be found. In this way, the illustrious lady, who once prided herself on being the patron of the freethinking cream of the scientific and literary world in Berlin, has come to find herself presiding over a conventicle. “The turn things have taken remains none the less extraordinary because we have tried to explain it. The Empress Augusta is the leader of the pietistic Junker clique, which, under Frederick William IV., did everything in its power to humiliate her, at a time when she, as Princess of Prussia, lived on the Rhine in a kind of honourable exile, because she was not prepared to humour the romantic visions of her royal brother-in-law. It is still related in Coblenz that a favourite amusement of the wife of that arch-Junker Kleist-Retzow, who is now leading the opposition against Bismarck in the Upper House, and who was then Governor of the Rhine Province, was to hang out her wet linen in the garden in such a way as to cut off the Princess’s view. Berliners still remember the article in the _Kreuzzeitung_ which actually denounced the ‘democrats’ for an ovation that once took place in the fifties, outside the Palace of the Prince of Prussia, because he and his consort had regained their popularity by opposing the pietistic clique. And yet to-day the Empress is working hand in hand with Kleist-Retzow and Senfft-Pilsach, with Lippe and Gerlach! The unnatural character of this alliance is the best guarantee for its short duration. The Empress, who is a clever woman, will grow tired of the adventure as soon as she discovers that, instead of influencing others, she is herself being used as a tool. Bismarck, however, must now prove the truth of what he once said to Bamberger in Paris: ‘I am