(_Miss Nightingale to Julius Mohl._) 35 SOUTH STREET, _July_ 28 [1867]. I am a little unhappy because the Queen of Prussia's Secretary told Mad. Mohl that I had seen the Queen. I liked her. I don't think the mixture of pietism and absolutism is much more attractive at the Court of Prussia than at the Court of Rome. Still, I am always struck, especially with our own Royal family, how superior they are in earnestness and education to other women. I know no two girls of any class, of any country, who take so much interest in things that are interesting, as the Crown Princess of Prussia and Princess Alice of Darmstadt--especially in theological matters and administration. The Queen of Holland, it will be remembered, had not been received; but at a later time Miss Nightingale saw her, in November 1868 and again in March 1870. "I think of you," wrote Queen Sophie (March 29, 1870), "as one of the highest and best I have met in this world." The Princess Alice asked for an interview in 1867 through Lady Herbert, who was able to inform Miss Nightingale that "the Princess has been to see most of the hospitals in London with a view to learn all about them so as to improve those in Darmstadt." Miss Nightingale saw the Princess in June, and in subsequent years there was much correspondence between them. But the royal lady who made the greatest impression on Miss Nightingale was the Crown Princess Victoria. It had been explained to Miss Nightingale by one of the Princess's ladies that "H.R.H. has always thought a life devoted to the comfort of fellow-beings and the alleviation of their sufferings the one most to be envied," and that "she knows your Notes on Hospitals and Notes on Nursing almost by heart." The Princess was in England at the end of 1868, and was full at the time of schemes for a new hospital at Berlin, for lying-in hospitals, for a training-school for nurses. She showed her practical purpose by sending to Miss Nightingale in advance her architect's plans. They had two long interviews in December, and Miss Nightingale had a very busy fortnight with Dr. Sutherland in collecting statistics about various lying-in hospitals and in preparing plans, with the assistance of the Army Medical Department and War Office Sanitary Committee, on the best model. Miss Nightingale was delighted with her visitor. "She took every point," she told Dr. Sutherland, "as quick as lightning." "I have a fresh neophyte," she wrote to Sir John McNeill (Dec. 25, 1868), "in the person of the Crown Princess of Prussia. She has a quick intelligence, and is cultivating herself in knowledge of sanitary (and female) administration for her future great career. She comes alone like a girl, pulls off her hat and jacket like a five-year-old, drags about a great portfolio of plans, and kneels by my bedside correcting them. She gives a great deal of trouble. But I believe it will bear fruit." That the inquiries of the