This spring "Fritz of Prussia," as his future father-in-law called him, came to pay a long visit to his fiancée. It is curious that Queen Victoria, in spite of her strong belief in love as the only right foundation for an engagement, had by no means the English notion of discreetly leaving the young people a good deal alone together. On the contrary, she seems to have entirely adopted the Continental practice of chaperonage; a passage in a letter written by her to King Leopold shows that she was always with them, and that she naturally found it very boring, but she endured it because she thought it was her duty. Prince Frederick William was still in England when in June the Princess Royal met with rather a terrifying accident, which is worthy of mention because it showed how strong was her character and how high her physical courage. The Princess was sealing a letter at her writing-table, when suddenly the sealing-wax flamed out and the flames caught her muslin sleeve. Her English governess, Miss Hildyard, was fortunately seated close to her, and her music mistress, Mrs. Anderson, was also in the room, giving Princess Alice a lesson. They sprang at once to the Princess's assistance and beat out the flames with a hearthrug; but not before her right arm had been severely burned from below the elbow to the shoulder. She showed the greatest self-possession and presence of mind, her first words being: "Send for Papa, and do not tell Mamma till he has been told." The Princess Royal had a long engagement, probably the longest that any lady of her rank has had, at least in modern times, but the months as they went by were fully occupied with her father's sedulous preparation of her intellect, as well as with the more frivolous preparations of her trousseau. In May 1857 Parliament voted for the Princess a dowry of £40,000 and an annuity of £4000--a provision which does not now seem to have erred on the side of generosity. But it must be remembered that what economists call "the purchasing power of the sovereign" was considerably greater then than now, and to find the modern equivalent of these sums one would have to add probably as much as 25 per cent. Prince Frederick William, attended by Count Moltke, paid another visit to England in June, and made his first public appearance with the Princess at the Manchester Art Exhibition. The young couple seem to have corresponded on quite the old-fashioned voluminous scale. After the Prince had gone home again in August, Moltke writes to his wife that the Princess had written a letter of forty pages to the Prince, and he adds the sarcastic comment: "How the news must have accumulated!"