It was during this Winter, if ever it was, that Friedrich received the following Letter from an aspiring Young Lady, just coming out, age seventeen,--in a remote sphere of things. In "Sleepy Hollow" namely, or the Court of Mirow in Mecklenburg-Strelitz, where we once visited with Friedrich almost thirty years ago. The poor collapsed Duke has ceased making dressing-gowns there; and this is his Niece, Princess Charlotte, Sister to the now reigning Duke. This Letter, in the translated form, and the glorious results it had for some of us, are familiar to all English readers for the last hundred years. Of Friedrich's Answer to it, if he sent one, we have no trace whatever. Which is a pity, more or less;--though, in truth, the Answer could only have been some polite formality; the Letter itself being a mere breath of sentimental wind, absolutely without significance to Friedrich or anybody else,--except always to the Young Lady herself, to whom it brought a Royal Husband and Queenship of England, within a year. Signature, presumably, this Letter once had; date of place, of day, year, or even century (except by implication), there never was any: but judicious persons, scanning on the spot, have found that the "Victory" spoken of can only have meant Torgau; and that the aspiring Young Lady, hitherto a School Girl, not so much as "confirmed" till a month or two ago, age seventeen in May last, can only have I written it, at Mirow, in the Winter subsequent. [Ludwig Giesebrecht,--DER FURSTENHOF IN MIROW WUHREND DER JAHRE 1708-1761, in _Programm des vereinigten Koniglichen und Stadt-Gymnasiums_ for 1863 (Stettin, 1863), pp. 26-29,--enters into a minute criticism.] Certain it is, in September NEXT, September, 1761, directly after George III.'s Wedding, there appeared in the English Newspapers, what doubtless had been much handed about in society before, the following "TRANSLATION OF A LETTER, SAID TO HAVE BEEN WRITTEN BY PRINCESS CHARLOTTE OF MECKLENBERG TO THE KING OF PRUSSIA, ON ONE OF HIS VICTORIES,"--without farther commentary or remark of any kind; everybody then understanding, as everybody still. So notable a Document ought to be given in the Original as well (or in what passes for such), and with some approach to the necessary preliminaries of time and place: [From _Gentleman's Magazine_ (for October, 1761, xxxi. 447) we take, verbatim, the TRANSLATION; from PREUSS (ii. 186) the "ORIGINAL," who does not say where he got it,--whether from an old German Newspaper or not.]-- [TO HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF PRUSSIA (in Leipzig, or Somewhere. or Somewhere). MIROW IN MECHLENBURG-STRELITZ, Winter of 1760-1761.]