and women alike in her
husband's dominions as the ideal of what a German "_hausfrau_" should
be, she has been able to exercise an influence of infinitely greater
importance upon the nation at large than any other consort of a
Prussian sovereign can have boasted to achieve.

It is to this estimable woman, whom some were disposed at first to
denounce as narrow-minded and witless, that must be attributed
the very strongly developed religious revival apparent throughout
Protestant Germany since the present emperor came to the throne. Prior
to the present reign, church-going was as a rule eschewed by the male
sex, women constituting the backbone of the congregation, while the
clergy of the Lutheran persuasion was looked down upon, being treated
by the territorial nobility much in the same way as upper servants,
that is to say, on a par with the farm bailiffs, the stewards and the
housekeepers In a word, religion and everything pertaining thereto was
not considered fashionable.

To-day all this is changed. Under the guidance of the empress, her
husband, reared by his broad-minded mother in the ideas of Strauss
and of Renan, has become a strict churchman, and court, nobility,
bureaucracy and in fact the middle and lower classes too, have
followed suit. Free-thinking and neglect of religious duties are
at present considered the acme of bad form in Germany. Everybody
professes the most profound interest in questions and enterprises
relating to the church, and a large number of daughters of the most
illustrious houses of the German nobility have conferred their hands
and their hearts upon penniless Lutheran pastors, whose social status
has thereby been entirely changed. Moreover, if during the past ten
years more churches have been built, particularly in Berlin, than had
been the case in the entire previous half-century, this is because
every one has become aware that the most facile way of winning
the good graces of the empress, and the favor of her consort is by
building a church, or endowing some hospital.

The empress is ever ready to help in every good work, and her private
charities are very great, but she does not approve of the higher
education or the emancipation of women, and entertains a holy horror
of everything pertaining to the female suffrage movement. Women,
according to her views, should remain in their own sphere, and should
regard their duties to their husbands, their children, and their homes
as their firs