That same autumn the Crown Princess paid her first visit to Darmstadt, to stay with her best loved sister, Princess Alice. The latter wrote to Queen Victoria a charming account of the visit, in which she said: "I always admire Vicky's understanding and brightness each time I see her again. She is so well, and in such good looks as I have not seen her for long. The baby is a love and is very pretty." In October the Crown Prince and Princess, with their four children, started for La Farraz, in Switzerland. They left immediately after the birthday of the Crown Prince, which day was also that of the baptism of Prince Sigismund. The Prince wrote just before leaving Potsdam to an intimate friend: "The older I grow, the more I come to know of human beings, the more I thank God for having given me a wife like mine. What happiness it is to leave behind one all one's anxieties and all the troubles of this life, to be alone with those we love! I trust that God will preserve our peace and domestic happiness. I ask for nothing else." CHAPTER XI HOME LIFE AND RELIGION The successful campaign against Denmark had drawn all German hearts together. Neither the Crown Prince nor the Crown Princess had ever been unpopular with the army, who felt really honoured by that honorary colonelcy which had so much amused the Princess. The Danish War greatly increased their popularity, and the year that followed was probably one of the happiest of their lives. They adored their children, who were being thoroughly well brought up, and, with the one paramount exception of the Prince Consort's death, no great bereavement had cast its shadow over their family circle. The Crown Princess had early determined in her social life to consider neither party spirit nor high official position; she preferred to gather round her a remarkable society of interesting and distinguished people,--scholars, theologians, archæologists and explorers, artists, and men of letters. She was always passionately fond of music, and many a young performer owed his or her first introduction to the public at the winter concerts which she organised, while no British painter or writer of eminence ever came to Berlin without receiving an invitation to the New Palace. One of the most striking testimonies to the Crown Princess's intellectual interests is to be found in a letter written to Charles Darwin, in January, 1865, by Sir Charles Lyell. The great geologist says that he had had,