Charlottenburg,
Friedrich Wilhelm, awakening with his due headache, thought, and was
heard saying, He had gone too far! Those gloomy looks of Hotham and
Dubourgay, on the occasion; they are a sad memento that our joyance was
premature. The English mean the Double-Marriage; and Friedrich
Wilhelm is not ready, and never fairly was, for more than the Single.
"Wilhelmina Princess of Wales, yes with all my heart; but Friedrich to
an English Princess--Hm, na;"--and in a day more: ["Instruction to his
Ministers, 5th April," cited by Ranke, i. 285 n.] plainly "No." And
there it finally rests; or if rocked about, always settles there again.

And why, No?--Truly, as regarded Crown-Prince Friedrich's marriage, the
question had its real difficulties: and then, still more, it had its
imaginary; and the subterranean activities were busy! The witnesses,
contemporaneous and other, assign three reasons, or considerations and
quasi-reasons, which the Tobacco-Parliament and Friedrich Wilhelm's
lively fancy could insist upon it till they became irrefragable:--

FIRST, his rooted discontent with the Crown-Prince, some even say his
jealousy of the Crown-Prince's talents, render it unpleasant to think of
promoting him in any way. SECOND, natural German loyalty, enlivened by
the hope of Julich and Berg, attaching Friedrich Wilhelm to the Kaiser's
side of things, repels him with a kind of horror from the Anti-Kaiser or
French-English side. "Marry my Daughter, if you like; I shall be glad to
salute her as Princess of Wales; but no union in your Treaty-of-Seville
operations: in politics go you your own road, if that is it, while I
go mine; no tying of us, by Double or other Marriages, to go one road."
THIRD, the magnificence of those English. "Regardless of expense,"
insinuates the Tobacco-Parliament; "they will send their grand Princess
hither, with no end of money; brought up in grandeur to look down on the
like of us. She can dazzle, she can purchase: in the end, may there not
be a Crown-Prince Party, capable of extinguishing your Majesty here
in your own Court, and making Prussia a bit of England; all eyes being
turned to such sumptuous Princess and her Crown-Prince,--Heir-Apparent,
or 'Rising Sun' as we may call him!"--

These really are three weighty almost dreadful considerations to a
poetic-tempered King and Smoking Parliament. Out of which there is no
refuge except indeed this plain fourth one: "No hurry about Fritz's
marriage; [Friedr