o son to him,--said Grandfather, still only about fifty, did take the
necessary steps: but they have been entirely unsuccessful; no new son
or child, only new affliction, new disaster has resulted from that third
marriage of his. And though the Princess Royal has had another little
Prince, that too has died within the year;--killed, some say on the
other hand, by the noise of the cannon firing for joy over it! [Forster,
_ Friedrich Wilhelm I., Konig von Preussen _ (Potsdam, 1834), i. 126
(who quotes Morgenstern, a contemporary reporter). But see also Preuss,
_ Friedrich der Grosse mit seinen Verwandten und Freunden _ (Berlin,
1838), pp. 379-380] Yes; and the first baby Prince, these same parties
farther say, was crushed to death by the weighty dress you put upon it
at christening time, especially by the little crown it wore, which had
left a visible black mark upon the poor soft infant's brow! In short, it
is a questionable case; undoubtedly a questionable outlook for Prussian
mankind; and the appearance of this little Prince, a third trump-card in
the Hohenzollern game, is an unusually interesting event. The joy
over him, not in Berlin Palace only, but in Berlin City, and over the
Prussian Nation, was very great and universal;--still testified
in manifold dull, unreadable old pamphlets, records official and
volunteer,--which were then all ablaze like the bonfires, and are now
fallen dark enough, and hardly credible even to the fancy of this new
Time.

The poor old Grandfather, Friedrich I. (the first King of
Prussia),--for, as we intimate, he was still alive, and not very
old, though now infirm enough, and laden beyond his strength with
sad reminiscences, disappointments and chagrins,--had taken much to
Wilhelmina, as she tells us; [_ Memoires de Frederique Sophie Wilhelmine
de Prusse, Margrave de Bareith, Soeur d Frederic-le-Grand _ (London,
1812), i. 5.] and would amuse himself whole days with the pranks and
prattle of the little child. Good old man: he, we need not doubt,
brightened up into unusual vitality at sight of this invaluable little
Brother of hers; through whom he can look once more into the waste dim
future with a flicker of new hope. Poor old man: he got his own back
half-broken by a careless nurse letting him fall; and has slightly
stooped ever since, some fifty and odd years now: much against his will;
for he would fain have been beautiful; and has struggled all his days,
very hard if not very wisely,