We have not space to give the pictures of the family broils in this unhappy household. Now the crabbed old man would snatch the plates from the table at dinner and fling them at the heads of his children, usually at hapless Wilhelmina or Fritz; then, angered at Wilhelmina because she refused to take whatever husband her cruel father might select, irrespective of her inclination or wishes, he shut the poor princess up in her apartment, and tried to starve her into submission; for, as she writes, “I was really dying of hunger, having nothing to eat but soup made with salt and water and a ragout of old bones, full of hairs and other dirt.” At last she yielded to her father’s demands; but then she incurred the anger of her mother, who had set her heart upon the match with the prince of Wales. So the poor princess’ days were full of bitterness. But, fortunately, the prince of Baireuth, whom she married, turned out to be a kind husband; but as he was absent most of the time on regimental duty, and had but his small salary, and the old marquis of Baireuth, her husband’s father, was penurious, irascible, and an inebriate, she often suffered for the necessaries of life. The home of her step-parents was unendurable, and the home of her childhood was still more so. Unhappy princess! and yet, in the midst of all this misery, her bright and graphic letters form one of the greatest delights to students of history, and give true pictures of the home of Frederick the Great, which can be found nowhere else. Fritz had now so seriously offended his father, that the king openly exposed him to contempt. He even flogged the prince with his rattan in the presence of others; and the young heir-apparent to the throne of Prussia, beautiful in person, high-spirited, and of superior genius, was treated by his father with studied insult, even in the presence of monarchs, of lords and ladies, of the highest dignitaries of Europe; and after raining blows upon his head, he exclaimed in diabolical wrath, as if desirous of goading his son to suicide: “Had I been so treated by my father, I would have blown my brains out. But this fellow has no honor. He takes all that comes.”