retreat, it is hardly practicable to prevent them from coming to an understanding. The Prussian Prince seems to have appealed successfully to the Queen’s good nature, and he soon obtained leave to make his proposal to the Princess before his visit came to an end. “During our ride up Craig-na-ban,” writes the Queen, in “The Leaves from a Journal,” “he (Prince Fritz) picked up a piece of white heather (the emblem of good luck), which he gave to her (the Princess Royal), and this enabled him to make an allusion to his hopes and wishes as they rode down Glen Girnoch.” The lady consented, and the happy pair were betrothed. “The young people,” writes Prince Albert to Stockmar, on the 2nd of October, “are passionately in love with each other, and the integrity, guilelessness, and disinterestedness of the Prince are quite touching.” “Our Fritz,” as the Prince was affectionately called, was no idle youth of fashion. He was already Colonel of the 1st Foot Guards, and a thorough soldier.[244] In every branch of the Army he had gone through a hard apprenticeship, as may be seen from the peremptory instructions which had been issued when he was ordered to serve with Colonel von Griesheim’s Dragoons. He had to master every elementary detail of drill and organisation, and his knowledge was tested by stern judges.[245] Col. von Griesheim gives the following account of an interview he had with Prince Fritz’s mother in the autumn of 1854:--“Prince Frederick William,” he says, “was then twenty-three. He was a young man of notably amiable manners. I received orders to wait upon his mother the Princess at the Palace, when she told me that she wished to speak to me as the new Commander of the Regiment, and I must do her the justice to say that she did not allow her motherly love for a son, or her anxiety to secure his personal comforts, to stand in the way of his duty. On the contrary, she begged me that I would in no way unduly spare the Prince, but insist on his learning his profession in every branch, so that he might be in a position to judge what was the real amount of labour which a military life entailed. She also desired that in non-military matters no special external respect might be shown him, expressing, at the same time, her confidence that neither I nor my brother-officers would abuse the relationship in which we were placed. She was sure I should not forget that it was the training of our future king that was entrusted to me, and that I should recognise the obligation of setting things in their true light, that a true judgment might be formed concerning them. The Princess was proceeding to talk over a number of incidental matters when, quite unaccompanied, the Prince of Prussia came into the room. He looked surprised, and said, ‘Ah! I see the new Commander is receiving the orders of the dear mamma.’ He laughed good-humouredly, and holding out his hand with the cordiality peculiar to him, added that I did not