“I do not wish to imply that a princess is forced to accept the first suitor who presents himself. She can choose her future husband within certain limits, but as most princes and kings are very much alike, choice is not a difficult matter after all. Part of our education is to accept without question whatever lies upon the knees of the gods, and although every princess doubtless at some time dreams of an ideal Prince Charming, she rarely meets him, and she usually marries someone quite different from the hero of her girlhood’s dreams.” There was some talk of marrying Princess Louisa to Dom Pedro—a sort of a cousin, the nephew of the Empress of Brazil; and she tells us what became of that suitor:— “Poor Dom Pedro! Three years after our meeting he went mad, and he is now under restraint in a castle somewhere in Austria.” Then Frederick August of Saxony—the present King of Saxony—was presented. Princess Louisa rather liked him, and she married him; and it is noteworthy that, though she ran away from him—impelled by something not herself which made for liberty—she speaks of him in her book without any trace of bitterness. He meant well, one gathers, but was not intelligent enough to understand his wife, who certainly appears to have had many perplexing characteristics, and allowed the well of his natural affection to be poisoned by evil counsellors. The details are set forth in “My Own Story”; but it is, of course, necessary to remember, when reviewing them, that, though Princess Louisa has told her story, the King of Saxony has not yet told his. One’s first impression is of a conflict between natural instincts and artificial conventions. What with their devotion to religion and etiquette—and their inability to distinguish the one thing from the other—the Heads of the Saxon House were doubtless difficult companions for an impulsive child of nature. They were stiff and pompous out of all proportion to their importance—as if they had all swallowed pokers in the cradle; and Princess Louisa came among them like a Daughter of Heth, and behaved accordingly—but more so. It would be hopeless to attempt to make separate catalogues of the things which she did and the things which she is only said to have done; but it is clear that she was a romp deficient in veneration for the common objects of worship in royal and Catholic circles.