This fine Palace, situated about twenty miles from Berlin, was built in the style of Louis XV known as Rococo, on a very marshy piece of ground by Frederick the Great, that most notable Hohenzollern whose spirit still dominates the Prussian nation. Why he did not choose a better site, where good sites are so many, must always remain one of those mysteries which deepen with time. “It was probably in a spirit of pure obstinacy,” said one German officer with whom I discussed the subject. “People said it was impossible to build a palace on such a spot, and so he set out to prove that it was not. He also wished to show that there was still money left in his coffers after the Silesian wars. But he did not really want the palace, and never lived in it for any length of time.” It is a cheerful-looking red building, with queer dimpled monstrous cherub heads and wreaths of flowers in yellow sandstone engirdling the upper windows. On the edge of the roof and along the terrace below stand rows of pseudo-Greek sandstone statues in flowing draperies, with whose features the frost often takes liberties, making necessary a yearly renovation and replacement of noses and fingers. Along the raised terraces and against the railings stand large orange-trees in tubs, which are every autumn taken up to the “Orangerie” and brought back to their places in the spring. On one side lies the big Sand-Hof or gravelled courtyard, divided by high iron railings edged with grass and flowers from the Mopke, the fine wide space where in former days Frederick drilled his soldiers. On the other side of the Mopke stand the royal stables, the kitchens, the chapel of the Palace, and, divided by a beautiful stone arcade, the two “Communs,” in one of which is housed the Palace guard, which occupies the ground floor, while the Commandant and his family inhabit the first floor. The Sand-Hof faces the apartments of the Emperor and Empress, which on the other side have an outlook onto the spacious garden, laid out in trim beds, with fountains on each side--a garden to look at rather than to walk in; but hidden away in corners behind big beech hedges, are other shady gardens of trees--rose-gardens, with grassy lawns, the children’s garden, one with a tea-house, where the Emperor and Empress breakfast in the summer-time with their family.