father's enemies, and a participator in the disgraceful conspiracy
which ensued for the purpose of barring him from succession to the
throne on the ground of his fearful malady.

As soon as the nature of the disease from which Frederick was
suffering had been ascertained, his opponents, Prince Bismarck first
and foremost, dug out from the most remote recesses of the family
archives of the house of Hohenzollern an obsolete and forgotten law
barring from the succession to the throne of Prussia any prince of
the blood who was afflicted with an incurable malady. Of course,
the original object of the statute in question was to enable the
elimination from the line of succession of princes afflicted with
hopeless insanity, or some such disease as would prevent them from
administering the government, thus rendering the institution of a
regency necessary. In one word, the purpose of the measure was to
prevent such a situation from arising in Prussia as prevails now in
Bavaria, where, since 1886 the throne has been occupied by a lunatic
prince, who was incurably insane for many years before his accession
to the crown, and whose dementia takes that peculiar form, which is
described in the Bible as having overtaken Nebuchadnezzar. King Otto
of Bavaria imagines himself to be alternately a quadruped or a bird,
and when he is not browsing on leaves and grass in the gardens of his
prison palace at Fuerstenried, under the impression that he is a sheep
or goat, he will stand on one leg in the centre of a shallow pond,
firmly convinced that he is a stork, occasionally flapping his long
coat-tails in lieu of wings, and greedily attempting to devour any
frogs or tadpoles that may come within his reach, unless prevented by
his attendants from doing so.

There have been, alas! numerous cases of insanity in the reigning
house of Prussia. Old Emperor William's elder brother and predecessor,
King Frederick-William IV., spent the last few years of his life
under restraint, hopelessly insane, his brother and ultimate successor
administering the government as regent. The late Princess Frederick
of Prussia was afflicted like her brother, the last Duke of
Anhalt-Bernburg, with a peculiar kind of lunacy which took the form of
an invincible objection to clothing of any kind whatsoever; while one
of her two sons, Prince Alexander, who died only a few months ago,
suffered from a species of good-natured imbecility, which led him
to offer his heart and h