ts before you, my dear father. You will say
they are painted by a foolish mother who sees nothing but good in her
children, and is quite blind to their faults or failings. But really, I
am watchful, and I do not notice in the children any dispositions or
evil propensities which need make us painfully anxious.... Circumstances
educate people, and it may be well that they learn to know the serious
side of life in their youth. Had they been brought up in luxury they
might think it was the natural course of things, that it must be so...."

When we consider that Louisa speaks of the future king and the future
Emperor of Germany, many things in the after history of Germany become
clear to us! She truly estimated the unfolding dispositions of the
future rulers of Germany. Posterity does not agree with her first modest
words: "Posterity will not place my name among those of celebrated
women, but when people think of the troubles of these times they may
say: 'She suffered much and endured with patience,' and I only wish they
may be able to add 'She gave birth to children who were worthy of better
times, and who by their strenuous endeavors have succeeded in attaining
them.'" Queen Louisa is the most famous and the best beloved woman who
ever sat on a Hohenzollern throne. Even to-day her portrait adorns
nearly every Prussian home, and her beautiful form in Grecian attire, as
a symbol of pure and noble womanhood, is found in thousands of American
homes where the prototype may not even be known by name.

She died as she had lived. In the agonies of a painful death she
preserved her patience and loveliness. When free from pain she lay very
tranquil, looking like an angel, and now and then repeating to herself a
few words of a very simple hymn which she had learned in her childhood.
The unhappy king said at her death: "Oh, if she were not mine, she might
recover." The king gazed on her dead form for a moment with a look of
anguish which wrung the hearts of all who witnessed it; then he left the
room, but soon returned with his sons. Her countenance was beautiful in
death, particularly the brow; and the calm expression of the mouth told
that struggle was forever past.

Sixty years later, in July, 1870, on the day of her death, William I.
(1861-1888) visited her Mausoleum, and prayed before the recumbent
statue of his great mother, as he did frequently, this time with a heart
burdened with hopes and fears, for again a war of tremendou