It must, however, be acknowledged that Prince Frederick William, especially in these early days, agreed with the Princess in regarding England as a perfect country with a perfect constitution. He was deeply grateful to her for having left an ideally happy home to become his wife, and his entire devotion was shown in many ways. Indeed, the only thing in which the Prince Frederick William of these days seems to have ever withstood the Princess Royal was in his refusal to give up his solitary evening walk in the streets of Berlin. The Princess used to go to bed quite early, and then the Prince would go out and walk about quite unattended. Years later, in reference to her domestic happiness, the Empress wrote feelingly to a friend: "The peace and blessed calm that I ever found in my home, by the side of my beloved husband, when powerful influences from outside were first distressing me, are blessings which I cannot describe." Some of the conditions of the Princess Royal's new life were undoubtedly very irksome to her. The tone of the Prussian Court in matters, not only of religion and politics, but also of etiquette, was very much narrower than that of the English Court. She seems to have found it impossible to guard her tongue, to conceal her convictions, or to hold aloof from political discussion. At "home," as she soon very unwisely began to call England, she had been used to say everything she thought from childhood upwards, sure of not being misunderstood, and reticence would have seemed to her mean, if not absolutely dishonest. But it is difficult to say when the Prussian reactionary party first became aware that in the bride of Prince Frederick William they had a determined and a brilliant opponent. It must, however, have been fairly early, for it is on record that during that first winter in Berlin "the very approach of a Tory or a reactionary seemed to freeze her up." Nor is it easy to see how much the Princess's father, watching anxiously from England, knew of this. She continued with unabated enthusiasm those historical and literary studies to which the Prince Consort had accustomed her, and she wrote him a weekly letter, asking his advice on political questions. She wrote to her mother daily, sometimes twice a day, but it was her father's influence which really counted with her, and that remained quite unimpaired. It is reasonable to suppose that he attributed whatever seemed to annoy and distress her in Prussian public life to the still paramount influence of the dying King. But he evidently did not at any time realise that, though factious persons might be ready enough to use her in their own interests, no one in Prussia really wanted to see a Princess dabbling in politics at all. Thus, we find the Prince writing to Stockmar in March 1858: