the great charitable
movements of Germany. She took an active part in bringing about the
establishment of the Geneva Convention, a most beneficial event in its
effects upon the humanization of war and its consequences. She was an
angel of mercy to the wounded soldiers of both friend and foe, and to
their widows and orphans, and was active in the Society of the Red
Cross, founded in 1864, and the Patriotic League of Women, founded after
the Austrian war in 1866. The Augusta Hospital, the Langenbeck House in
Berlin, named after the great surgeon of that name, and the Augusta
Foundation in Charlottenburg, were created by her. She was deeply
religious and broadly tolerant; so that the so-called Kulturkampf, _i.
e._, the struggle between the Prussian state and the Roman Catholic
Church, was profoundly distasteful to her, a fact which precipitated a
silent, but bitter, feud between the empress and her party, on the one
hand, and Prince Bismarck, on the other. While her political influence
cannot at all times be considered to have been beneficent, her
cultivation of the arts certainly enriched the national life of Berlin,
and indeed of Germany. She was a cultured musician, and composed several
marches, an overture and the music to a ballet _The Masquerade_. She
died in January, 1890, in Berlin, and was buried beside her great
consort in the Mausoleum of Charlottenburg. Beautiful monuments have
been erected in her honor at Baden-Baden, at Berlin, and at Coblenz, her
favorite resort. The memory of the noble empress is engraved upon the
hearts of her people.

Victoria, princess royal of England, born November 21, 1840, daughter of
Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort Albert, became eighteen years
later the wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, finally, for ninety-nine
days, Emperor Frederick III. (1888). She came to Prussia when the dawn
of its future greatness was scarcely visible. The king, Frederick
William IV., was hopelessly ill, his mind affected; her father-in-law,
Prince William of Prussia and in 1861 king, was regent for him. The
times were gloomy: constitutional conflict, political struggles
threatening the monarchy itself, then a seven years' war as it were with
Denmark, Austria, and France until 1871, agitated the country and tried
the soul of its rulers. This was the time when Victoria appeared
greatest and dearest to the German people. From the royal palace to the
poorest cottage, there was no household then that h