such vital or almost fatal importance! Without a Friedrich, the affair
could be reduced to something like its real size, and recorded in a
few pages; or might even, with advantage, be forgotten altogether, and
become zero. More gigantic instance of much ado about nothing has seldom
occurred in human annals;--had not there been a Friedrich in the heart
of it.

Crown-Prince Friedrich is still very young for marriage-speculations on
his score: but Mamma has thought good to take matters in time. And so
we shall, in the next ensuing parts of this poor History, have to hear
almost as much about Marriage as in the foolishest Three-volume Novel,
and almost to still less purpose. For indeed, in that particular,
Friedrich's young Life may be called a ROMANCE FLUNG HELLS-OVER-HEAD;
Marriage being the one event there, round which all events turn,--but
turn in the inverse or reverse way (as if the Devil were in them); not
only towards no happy goal for him or Mamma, or us, but at last towards
hardly any goal at all for anybody! So mad did the affair grow;--and is
so madly recorded in those inextricable, dateless, chaotic Books. We
have now come to regions of Narrative, which seem to consist of murky
Nothingness put on boil; not land, or water, or air, or fire, but a
tumultuously whirling commixture of all the four;--of immense extent
too. Which must be got crossed, in some human manner. Courage, patience,
good reader!

QUEEN SOPHIE DOROTHEE HAS TAKEN TIME BY THE FORELOCK.

Already, for a dozen years, this matter has been treated of. Queen
Sophie Dorothee, ever since the birth of her Wilhelmina, has had the
notion of it; and, on her first visit afterwards to Hanover, proposed
it to "Princess Caroline,"--Queen Caroline of England who was to be, and
who in due course was;--an excellent accomplished Brandenburg-Anspach
Lady, familiar from of old in the Prussian Court: "You, Caroline, Cousin
dear, have a little Prince, Fritz, or let us call him FRED, since he is
to be English; little Fred, who will one day, if all go right, be King
of England. He is two years older than my little Wilhelmina: why should
not they wed, and the two chief Protestant Houses, and Nations, thereby
be united?" Princess Caroline was very willing; so was Electress Sophie,
the Great-Grandmother of both the parties; so were the Georges, Father
and Grandfather of Fred: little Fred himself was highly charmed, when
told of it; even little Wilhelmina, with her do