“_Ragaz, 30th September._--Thinking of our little services, I have written the enclosed prayers. Perhaps you can use them. I have also begun Otto’s Memoirs, and have written to Nana (Prince Otto’s English nurse) and begged her to give me details of his earliest childhood, ‘If with all your hearts ye truly seek Me, ye shall ever surely find Me, saith the Lord.’ I should like to inscribe this text on every page. I should like to seek and find Him. I have never really loved Him. Frau Arnemann says: ‘God is drawing me to Him through all that I love, and whom He has taken to Himself.’ How gladly I will let myself be drawn! This winter I shall stay at home, and look forward to it much. I have my hands full of business too, for when I have finished my translation of Carlyle I have a new plan. Frau Arnemann always wished me to write a book for children. Only I cannot think of anything suitable. I can only write about what I have lived through and felt.” After many fine days, during which walks of three or four hours were undertaken, a sudden and lasting fall of snow had induced the Grand Duchess to leave Ragaz. Princess Elizabeth now returned home. She spent the winter quietly and happily with her mother at Monrepos. “I look back upon this time with particular pleasure,” she writes; “I think of the dreamy hours spent in the little room, of the endless conversations on deep subjects with Fräulein Lavater, and of the evenings when our spinning wheels hummed and my brother read aloud to us.” In the summer of 1868 she travelled to Sweden on a visit to her royal relations. She calls Sweden the land of poetry; and the magnificence of nature there, and the beautiful legends which are attached to every stone, inspired her fancy. She liked to be in the north, and delighted in Stockholm. The magnificent town is enthroned like a queen of the waters on her islands between the lake and the sea. It is surrounded by many oaks of a hundred years’ growth, which are the masts and pennons of the ships, and historical treasures of all sorts. “We made a wonderful expedition to the Malarsee. The Duke of Ostgothland, the present King Oscar II., had taken a ship, and we glided on the shining sea between a hundred emerald isles to the curious old castle of Grypsholm. What added immensely to the charm of our voyage were the songs of the Swedish officers, whom my uncle invited for our amusement. These gentlemen sing nearly the whole day, and songs varied according to the places we passed. Their voices were as clear as bells, whispering mysteriously or sounding loud in the uncontrollable joy of youth. My uncle had the tombs of the kings in the Riddersholmskirche open for us to see. Each dynasty has a separate vault. I laid my hand upon the coffins of Gustav Adolph and Karl XII., but could not help shuddering before these open graves. The drive through the country to Helsingborg was very fine. We passed more than a hundred seas. The red wooden houses and the castles