The story of the betrothal, and how it was associated with the giving and receiving of a piece of white heather, a proverbial emblem of good luck, is very prettily told by Her Majesty in “Leaves from the Journal in the Highlands.” The chief anxiety the parents had in the matter was on account of the Princess’s extreme youth; but her intellect and character were unusually developed, and she had, what so often accompanies fine intellect, a child-like innocence and purity of heart which specially endeared her to all in her home circle. Prince Albert wrote at once to Stockmar to tell him the news: “Victoria,” he wrote, “is greatly excited; still, all goes smoothly and prudently. The Prince is really in love, and the little lady does her best to please him.” The engagement was not well received by an important section of the English Press. So little could the writer of the articles read the future, that Prussia was sneered at “as a paltry German dynasty,” Prince Frederick William was described as being in “ignominious attendance” on his “Imperial Master” the Czar, and it was predicted that the Princess would become anti-English in feeling, and also, with not much consistency, that she would be sent back to England at no distant date, “an exile and a fugitive.” The ignorance of this attack robbed it of its poignancy. Prince Frederick William and his father were strongly in accord with the policy of England during the Crimean War, and consequently very much out of favor at their own Court and in St. Petersburg.