As Frederic William the Fourth was childless, his brother William was declared heir presumptive and known as Prince of Prussia. Cultured, refined, with Herculean strength and Apollo-like grace and beauty, he was the beau ideal of royalty, adored by nobles and burghers. Forming an early attachment for one of his mother’s maids of honor, he insisted for many years--the affection being mutual--on marrying her, but when the succession devolved on him he manfully sacrificed individual feeling to dynastic interests and contracted an alliance with Augusta, Princess of Saxe Weimar. Though both understood that personal preference played no part in their union, the most critical court gossip could find nothing to condemn in their conjugal relations; she, like Cæsar’s wife, above suspicion, yielding him wifely obedience; he, like Bayard, _sans peur et sans reproche_, uniformly tender and attentive. She was tall, stately, with regular features, cold, haughty manner, every look and gesture suggesting ancestral pride and conscious superiority, yet withal capable of warm attachments and loyal to friends once tried. Devoted to art and literature, she was the friend and patron of artists and scholars, and even when long past middle life still devoted her mornings to study. They had two children, a son named for the great Frederic and a daughter named for that adored Queen Louisa, whose heroism in the Napoleonic struggle had won world-wide recognition and admiration. The former, known in after years as Frederic the Noble, Emperor of Germany, was a wilful, intractable boy, represented in an unamiable light in many familiar anecdotes, yet his career adorns the brightest page in his country’s history. The Prince was devoted to these children, superintending their physical, mental and spiritual development, instilling in their minds correct principles and noble aims, and fitting them by study, discipline and example for their destined high stations. He was standing with Louischen in his arms one morning watching a military procession, when she, excited by the music, sprang through an open window to the street below. Rushing frantically down stairs he was relieved to find her in the arms of a street urchin who, standing beneath the window, caught her as she fell. Of course the boy’s fortune was made. The Prince, clasping his darling to his breast, handed his watch and chain to her rescuer, and, taking his name and address, volunteered his protection. They were riding together in after years in Unter-den-Linden, he German Emperor, she Grand Duchess of Baden, when Hoedel made his dastardly attempt to assassinate his sovereign, and he springing forward to shield his child, accomplished thereby his own deliverance. When Nobiling a few months afterward, and near the same spot, fired at and severely wounded his master, the Emperor’s first words on recovering from the shock were: “Thank God, dear Louischen was not along to-day!”