*TOPICS OF THE - DAY.
TILE EMPRESS FREDERICK.
Enipress Frederick, whose death from the most .1.. of diseases is . this week deplored through two great countries, was a remarkable woman Who may yet occupy a higher position in history. than even her rank, though in the world there was none higher, would have secured to her. Her letters to England during her forty- three :years of life in Germany must have been preserved, and fifty years hence—or shall we say seventy ?—when it will be prudent to publish them, they must throw a flood of light upon the history, the qualities; and the ideas of the first three German Emperors. They will be eagerly studied by all historians; and if they are as bright as they probably are, they will completely preserve their author from the oblivion which falls upon almost all Princesses who have never reigned. The ironic ' genius who presides over the.house of Coburg; and has, given its members so many successes but never suffered the success to be complete, sentenced the Empress to the greatest of earthly positions, yet so placed her that, with as much capacity to govern as Queen Louisa of Prussia or her own ancestress, Caroline of • Anspach and England, she could only observe. Born .Princess Royal of England, with a bright and eager mind, and carefully educated by the most com- petent of fathers, she was married at eighteen to the heir of one of the great dynasties, soon to be ranked as, for Continental power perhaps the very first. Her hus- band, who looked like a Paladin, and was a man of beauti- ful character, well entitled to his popular German epithet of "the Wise," was through life perfectly devoted to her, and lie lived long enough to mount, with her by his side, tie great throne which he, a successful soldier as well as a thoughtfal. statesman, had helped to build. There, how- ever, the kocid. fOrtnne of the Princess Victoria ended. She was too bright for the Court she entered, had no sympathy with its cast-iron etiquettes, its preference of birth to genius, and its unalterable reverence for uniform.. Like the wife.of the Great Elector whom'she recalled in her contempt for "the infinitely little;"' she-would, had-she been addicted to that habit, have taken snuff.at the crucial moment of the most gorgeous.ceremonial. .F411 of -English ideas and of her father's, she.gaie the Prussian great-ladies .the idea -that she "looked don upon their ways as • " not . English"; she revered only the . able ; and she believed, to the hbrior of all PrUssian notables, in . Parliamentary government. She was a. Liberal Princess, and to 'the old servants 'of the _ dynasty such 'a character was as unintelligible as Carlyle found " a Jacobin Prince of the Blood." Arinoured as she was in her birth-rank, in which even' German'heralds could find no flaw, and in the deietion- of . her husband; she might still, however, have lived down the acrid criticism of Berlin, and have been as *Tiller as Queen Louisa, but 'that the irony of - her fate matched her against the most successful statesman of our,a,ge,. who detested Parliamentarism, disliked brightness in women, and loathed the " English ideas " which had made a State great though governed by an unregimented people. He dreaded their infectious quality, and fought the Crown Princess almost as, an enemy. The cause of his special personal -bitterness is Still unrevealed, but it is possible that .the Princess, talking to her father-in-law, who had a likingfor her conversation, had been satirical, and natures like , vines Bismarck. pardon. anything sooner than well- founded satire.. It was hardly possible for a woman to win 'in such a contest. Bismarck was too strong for the Crown Princess, thss. country. took .its cue from the man who had made it great, and the "Englishwoman " whose counsel might have reconciled militarism and liberty was left without influence save inher own palace. There it remained unbroken, and when her husband mounted the throne she regained her weight in affairs, thougk unfor- tunately.not her popularity. That, also, might have accreted to herby degrees had the Emperor Frederick lived to carry out his ideas and hers, but he did. not reign even for. a hundred days, there was no time forhis Liberalism to be fruitful, and to her son her dominant ideas were anti- pathetic. His is too clear a mind to misunderstand them as .many of his counsellors .did ; but though he removed Prince Bismarck, he preferred to reign as a. Hohenzollern, the' actual and active ruler of the Monarchy, the only person in it with initiative ; and the Empress withdrew.- i t° lead for twelve years- 'a most dignified private life occupied with art and literature and correspondence, fun of interests and usefulness, until while still not old—only sixty-one--the slow but irresistible disease of which her husband died claimed her also as its victim. She bore her pain stoically, only forbidding accurate bulletins, and refusing all aid from opium ; 'but the last year Of her life must have been one of unintermittent suffering and fear. It was almost a tragic life, as the Times says, certainly one marked by strange ironies' of fate, even though we remember, as we are apt to forget, that for thirty years the Empress enjoyed what is not often given to Princesses, an ideally happy home, where till disease appeared she could dream of a future in which thought and action might be one.
It is a difficult position that of a bright Princess who marries into a great foreign house, and one. sometimes wonders that it is so readily accepted, more especially as the suitor can rarely be thoroughly known. Her friend- ships are those of her own land, her ways can scarcely be those of her adopted country, and there is always some difference of instinct against which the new entourage rebels. The Queen-Regent of Spain, though always re- spected alike for her birth, her capacity, and her singleness of motive, has never been embraced by Spain, -mainly, the gossips say, because of her Austrian franlmess of speech, and her inability to conceal her feeling that the bull- ring is a cruel and barbarous amusement. After seventeen years she is regarded as a foreigner still. In no State do the people love " foreign influences," and if the . new: Crown Princess or Queen has any individuality, any views about politics, any preferences as to public men, she . is sure to be considered by the half- ignorant a "foreign influence." This is especially the case if she is English, for the "English stamp is ineffaceable, and there does exist,. though it is often ignered, a comity of the Continent. She may no doubt conceal her ' opinions. as Kings must often do,-and seem to be without a personality, but the. man who reigns has -motives for reticence which the lady, . who can only . criticise . his reigning, has .not. Besides, she,must talk to. her husband at any rate, and the wife who talks to -her husband,, and talks well, influences him, and is seen to influence him by those whose firstinterest is to be sure whence he derives his views. It is easy to say "Reign in society," but society has its politics as well as the nation, and is nearly as impatient of " foreign " direction. One would think it was easy to shroud the Crown Princess or Queen so that nothing should be known of her except her public appearances, but experience does not justify the belief. No secrets are . so jealously kept as those of the Russian . Court, yet there' is a party in Russia . which attributes half the action of the Emperor' to the influence of his Empress, who has never during her married life stepped. voluntarily to the front.. .The difficulty is exasperated - by-the fact- that the Princess - cannot be cut off from her relatives, her friends, and her country- men ,as by an impassable wall; and her discretion, even if it is perfect; is not obligatory on them, and very_ often is not practised. " The women, as they used to be called, of a great 'Princess, though usually devoted to her, are often as dangerous as enemies: The Princess's position, in-fact, re- quires the tact of a first-class Ambassador, and though the Royal caste are all supposed to possess it, serene tact is a quality hardly to be demanded of a young lady . newlyplaeed at the top of a world amidst which she was not bred.up, and- in which she has probably still- some lincuistic difk- c_ulties to overcome. We suppose the Empress Frederick was at first a little too openly English; but that German society could not pardon :this, .and never recognised :fully . hos' completely she had cast in her lot with .her adopted country, speaks far more . clearly for its rather- narrow patriotism than for the geniality-its writers claim.
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