“Bertie and Alex [the Prince and Princess of Wales] have been here since Saturday afternoon.... The visit of the King [of Prussia] went off very well, and Alex was pleased with the kindness and civility of the King. I hear that the meeting was satisfactory to both parties, which I am heartily glad of. Bearing ill-will is always a mistake, besides its not being right.” Another marriage in the Royal Family still further complicated the Schleswig-Holstein question from the domestic point of view, for in 1866 Princess Helena, the Queen’s third daughter, married Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, the second son of the German claimant of the Duchies. The Queen gave her daughter away. The Princess and her husband have made their home in England. It was in this year that the war between North and South Germany, headed respectively by Prussia and Austria, about the disposal of the Schleswig-Holstein Duchies, had the effect of bringing the Queen’s two sons-in-law, Prince Frederick William of Prussia and Prince Louis of Hesse, into the field of battle on opposite sides. This was a severe trial. The Princess Alice’s letters showed that it caused her intense anguish. She, like her father, longed for the unity of Germany under the headship of Prussia, and was quite ready to submit to the sacrifices this would entail on the smaller German Princes; but this war of brother against brother, and friend against friend, was a thing which she felt to be too fearful to contemplate. In this hour of great trial, the love and confidence between the sisters and their respective husbands never wavered. Prince Louis went to Berlin, before the actual outbreak of hostilities, to see his brother-in-law, and he then made sure that though their respective allegiance brought them into conflict as soldiers, yet as men they would remain brothers and friends. North Germany under Prussia was, as every one knows, successful in the conflict, and the victorious Prussian army marched into Darmstadt just at the time of the birth of Princess Alice’s third daughter (July 11th, 1866). The newly made mother lay in bed hearing the shouts of her husband’s victors, at the very time knowing that he was still under fire, and that she was unable to get any news of his safety. The christening of the little Princess was put off till it could take place on the day on which the treaty of peace was ratified at Berlin; the baby then received the name of Irène, in commemoration of the event. The poor little Princess of peace had very warlike godfathers,--the whole of the cavalry brigade which had been commanded by her father in the late war. It is significant that just before this war Princess Alice had written to the Queen using the expression: “I long to ... know that your warm heart is _acting_ for Germany.” That is the woman all over: to feel, is to translate feeling into action wherever power to do so is not lacking. The warp and woof of home and