Five years ago, on the death of the first little Prince, there had surmises risen, obscure rumors and hints, that the Princess Royal, mother of the lost baby, never would have healthy children, or even never have a child more: upon which, as there was but one other resource,--a widowed Grandfather, namely, and except the Prince Royal no son to him,--said Grandfather, still only about fifty, did take the necessary steps: but they have been entirely unsuccessful; no new son or child, only new affliction, new disaster has resulted from that third marriage of his. And though the Princess Royal has had another little Prince, that too has died within the year;--killed, some say on the other hand, by the noise of the cannon firing for joy over it! [Forster, _ Friedrich Wilhelm I., Konig von Preussen _ (Potsdam, 1834), i. 126 (who quotes Morgenstern, a contemporary reporter). But see also Preuss, _ Friedrich der Grosse mit seinen Verwandten und Freunden _ (Berlin, 1838), pp. 379-380] Yes; and the first baby Prince, these same parties farther say, was crushed to death by the weighty dress you put upon it at christening time, especially by the little crown it wore, which had left a visible black mark upon the poor soft infant's brow! In short, it is a questionable case; undoubtedly a questionable outlook for Prussian mankind; and the appearance of this little Prince, a third trump-card in the Hohenzollern game, is an unusually interesting event. The joy over him, not in Berlin Palace only, but in Berlin City, and over the Prussian Nation, was very great and universal;--still testified in manifold dull, unreadable old pamphlets, records official and volunteer,--which were then all ablaze like the bonfires, and are now fallen dark enough, and hardly credible even to the fancy of this new Time.