This quarrel, which ought to have been confined to medical
papers or to Charlottenburg, bids fair to develop into a European scandal. All sorts of stories are circulated as to a quarrel between the Emperor William and his mother, and it is even asserted that the Empress Victoria, who is, of course, legally, while in Germany, the Emperor's subject, has been placed under some sort of restraint, —an impossibility. The root of the quarrel is the right to the possession of some papers about the proposed Regency, which the Emperor claims as head of his House, as well as of the State, but which the Empress Victoria, before her husband's death, as it is alleged, though again without evidence, sent away to England. The Emperor's demand, it is said, is that they should be returned, under penalty of his employing some of the extensive prerogatives with regard to his family given him by unrepealed Prussian laws. The affair creates a great commotion in Berlin and Vienna, and even London ; but the evidence as yet is worth exceedingly little. As a rule, all scandals about Courts are either exaggerations of misunder- stood facts, or wilful inventions for party purposes. Very powerful persons are, we fancy, exerting themselves to make England unpopular in Germany, and the new Emperor un- popular in England. While the two countries are at variance, Russia is supposed to be safe.
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