true man--a mediaeval "Miller of the Dee"--asked no other recompense than "only liberty to cut, of scrags and waste wood, what will suffice for my charring purposes." This was at once granted, along with the freehold of a snug farm, and an annual and ample allowance of corn from the barns of the Electors. All was secured to him and his posterity by formal deed, and his descendants to this day enjoy the privileges so valiantly earned by their ancestor four centuries ago. From the two princes so rescued, descended respectively the Ernestine and the Albertine branches of the Saxon house. The Queen is--as her husband was--twelfth in descent from the little Prince Ernest, who became the progenitor of the former line. [Sidenote: THE QUEEN'S SAXON ANCESTORS.] The parent stock had boasted among other meritorious or distinguished representatives the names of Conrad the Great, Otho the Rich, Henry the Illustrious, three Fredericks, dubbed respectively the Serious, the Warlike, and the Benignant; whilst, as disparaging sets-off, either demerit or misfortune was indicated, in the instance of other Electors, by these sobriquets--the Oppressed, the Degenerate, the Severe, and, strangest of all, Frederick-with-the-Wounded-Cheek. This habit of designating the successive Electors by their moral or other peculiarities, or by the incidents or accidents of their careers, was continued but for a few generations of the Ernestine branch of the bifurcated line. It contained a Magnanimous Frederick, and a Fiery Ernest, after whose death, in 1675, this pleasing plan of picturesque designation no longer meets the eye of the student. The chivalrous protection which Frederick the Magnanimous--or the Wise, as he is sometimes also denominated--spread as a buckler over Luther and the Lutherans cost him his birthright. The bigoted Charles V. diverted, in 1547, the Electoral dignity from the Ernestine to the Albertine branch, and the fortunes of the house cannot be said to have been fully restored until the Treaty of Tilsit, in 1807, ratified as its main provisions were by that of Vienna, seven years later.