ich Wilhelm to Reichenbach (13th May), infra.] he is
but eighteen gone; evidently too young for housekeeping. Thirty is a
good time for marrying. 'There is, thank God, no lack of royal lineage;
I have two other Princes,'"--and another just at hand, if I knew it.

To all which there is to be added that ever-recurring invincible
gravitation towards the Kaiser, and also towards Julich and Berg, by
means of him,--well acted on by the Tobacco-Parliament for the space of
those six weeks. During which, accordingly, almost from the first day
after that Hotham Dinner of April 3d, the answer of the royal mind, with
superficial fluctuations, always is: "Wilhelmina at once, if you choose;
likely enough we might agree about Crown-Prince Friedrich too, if once
all were settled; but of the Double-Marriage, at this present time, HORE
NIT, [Ranke, i. 285 n.] I will have nothing to say." And as the English
answer steadily, "Both or none!"--meaning indeed to draw Prussia away
from the Kaiser's leading-strings, and out of his present enchanted
condition under the two Black-Artists he has about him, the Negotiation
sinks again into a mere smoking, and extinct or plainly extinguishing
state.

The Grumkow-NOSTI Cipher Correspondence might be reckoned as another
efficient cause; though, in fact, it was only a big concomitant symptom,
much depended on by both parties, and much disappointing both. In the
way of persuading or perverting Friedrich Wilhelm's judgment about
England, this deep-laid piece of machinery does not seem to have done
much, if anything; and Hotham, who with the English Court had calculated
on it (on their detection of it) as the grand means of blowing Grumkow
out of the field, produced a far opposite result on trying, as we shall
see! That was a bit of heavy ordnance which disappointed everybody.
Seized by the enemy before it could do any mischief; enemy turned it
round on the inventor; fired it off on the inventor, and--it exploded
through the touch-hole; singeing some people's whiskers: nothing more!--

A PEEP INTO THE NOSTI-GRUMKOW CORRESPONDENCE CAUGHT UP IN ST. MARY AXE.

Would the reader wish to look into this Nosti-Grumkow Correspondence at
all? I advise him, not. Good part of it still lies in the Paper-Office
here; [Prussian Despatches, vols. xl. xli.: in a fragmentary state; so
much of it as they had caught up, and tried to make use of;--far too
much.] likely to be published by the Prussian Dryasdust in comi