ted with many memories of the youth of
Frederick the Great. At the Castle of Rheinsberg he spent the
comparatively happy years of his unhappy married life. His neglected
queen, who never saw his favorite palace at Sans Souci, and who was
wife and queen only in name for many long years, said that the early
days at Rheinsberg were her happiest. Though these places are hardly
more than thirty miles northwest of Berlin, lack of railway
connections renders it impracticable to visit them in a single day.

The most direct thoroughfare to Copenhagen, that by way of Rostock,
passes, outside the elevated railway known as the Ringbahn, the
village of Pankow, also reached by tramway, and also once the
residence of the Queen of Frederick the Great. This road leads north
from Berlin, at first through a country dotted with lakes. Our memory
of these is of beautiful sheets of water, surrounded by the green of
mid-June, and over-arched by the blue sky and the fleecy cumuli of a
perfect summer day. The characteristic North German landscape was here
seen to fine advantage. The color of the cottages and farm-houses
harmonizes or contrasts beautifully with the landscape. Roofs of brown
weather-beaten thatch or of dull red tiles, in the midst of embowering
trees and shrubbery, formed for us pictures of beauty long to be
remembered. Frienwalde, to the northeast, has mineral springs in the
most attractive part of Brandenburg, and is growing as a place of
summer resort. The fine old monastery, and the ruined early Gothic
abbey-church of Chorin on the Stettin Railway, the burial-place of the
Margraves of Brandenburg, are interesting to all students of
architecture.

An eastern suburb of Berlin is Koepenick, in the chateau of which the
youthful Frederick the Great was tried for his life by court-martial,
by order of his tyrannical father; and in the same direction, an hour
from Berlin by express-train, is Cuestrin, whose strong castle was the
scene of his subsequent imprisonment, and where, in sight from his
window, his noble friend, Lieutenant von Katte, was beheaded on the
ramparts for no other crime than fidelity to his young master.

Another most interesting excursion is that to Frankfort-on-the-Oder,
two hours eastward of Berlin. This largest city of Brandenburg outside
the capital has a varied history, dating from before the time when
this region was won from the heathen Slavs to Germany and
Christianity. This old stronghold of the Wendi